The UK Needs These Five Kinds of Healthcare Workers

The global healthcare shortage is evidenced nowhere better than in the UK, where a recent survey determined a staggering 80 percent of NHS workers are concerned about the impact of understaffing on patient safety and care. With demand anticipated to rise even higher in correlation with the aging population, the crisis will only worsen without intervention.

If you want to be part of the solution and are interested in working in the exciting area of healthcare in the UK, consider one of these five sought-after professions.

1. Nurses

While the nursing shortage is a global dilemma, the UK is particularly affected. Not only are there not enough nurses to begin with, but student nurses are also dropping out of their degree courses, according to The Guardian.

Ben Gershlick, senior economics analyst at the Health Foundation, said, “While the attrition rate has remained fairly constant over the last decade its impact is becoming more severe bearing in mind the overall shortage of nurses, vacancies in nursing posts and rising demand pressures on the NHS. The need for nurses trained in the UK has also increased as we have seen a recent fall in the inflow of nurses coming from abroad.”

2. Midwives

A July 2018 Telegraph article identified a shortage of midwives, alongside nurses, as a critical issue. In fact, in the nine-year period between September 2009 and April 2018, the total number of nurses and midwives in the UK rose by just 6,500 positions. Meanwhile, demand has grown exponentially. A drop in applications (and in the quality of those applications), meanwhile, indicates even bigger challenges loom in the future.

Janet Davies, Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said, "It's very worrying that the number of vacant posts for nurses and midwives has increased more than those for any other type of clinical staff….We also know that not all vacant nurse jobs are even advertised in the current climate, so these figures will be an underestimate. They bear out what patients, their families and our own surveys repeatedly tell us -- that there just aren't enough nurses to provide safe care."

3. Physiotherapists

According to a recent report from The Times, thousands of patients in Scotland are waiting months for care for joint and muscle concerns due to a lack of physiotherapists. In fact, of the 140 physiotherapist vacancies in the Scottish NHS, 44 of them had been empty for three or more month. As a result, more than 6,000 people had been on the waiting list for physiotherapy treatment for 16 weeks or longer, at the close of 2017.

Chartered Society of Physiotherapy in Scotland's spokesperson, Kenryck Lloyd-Jones, said, “This problem is not going to go away. One of the key features of the new GP contract and plans to transform community care is the role of the physiotherapist as a first point of contact.”

4. Paramedics

Paramedics may have the most thrilling jobs in the healthcare industry. Along with the thrills, however, comes burnout caused by long hours and rising demand. According to the latest job vacancy figures shared by The Guardian, ambulance services in the UK are short nearly 1,000 frontline staff.

Speaking on the issue and efforts underway to remedy it, a London Ambulance Service spokeswoman said, “We are continuing to reduce our vacancy rate through a programme of recruitment of new staff. While this is ongoing, we are still able to offer overtime opportunities for existing staff where necessary to ensure that we can respond to calls as quickly as possible. Our response times to the most seriously injured patients are well within the average of those being achieved by ambulance services across the country.”

5. General Practitioners (GPs)

“Nearly every general practice in England is short of a family doctor,” reveals a recent Daily Express article. To that end, the NHS started the GP Forward Program in 2016 with the aim of adding 5,000 new doctors to the system by the year 2021.

In the meantime, if you are a doctor from abroad interested in working in the UK, the shortage may open the door as qualified foreign medics are being “fast-tracked” to fill positions.

Chairwoman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Helen Stokes-Lampard, explained, “One immediate solution is to look overseas. The Royal College of GPs has been hugely supportive of NHS England’s plans to recruit 2,000 fully-qualified GPs from abroad and we are working constructively with them and others to explore ways of streamlining processes for this to happen, whilst maintaining the highest levels of patient safety.”

The good news? With increased awareness of the growing crisis, experts are heightening their efforts not only to fill the void, but to resolve the factors that led to it in the first place. This ultimately means a brighter future -- both for healthcare professionals and for the patients they serve.

Read more about studying subjects in healtchare in the UK here.