A multi-million-pound grant has been awarded to a group of
researchers – including Northumbria University academics – to help tackle
challenges facing healthcare workers in remote and deprived areas.
Workforce sustainability is a critical area for UK health and social
care services, with 106,432 unfilled posts in secondary care, and 131,000
unfilled posts in the social care sector.
Now the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has
invested £5m into research, which will be led by Newcastle University, focused
on addressing challenges in healthcare recruitment and retention.
The research aims to enable better working environments, leading to a
more stable, healthy workforce, and improve care for patients and service
users.
It will also support better workforce planning and organisation, with
the potential to save the NHS money by reducing recruitment and agency staff
costs, and better meet future patient needs.
Professor Alison Steven, from Northumbria University, who is part of
the partnership, said: "We are delighted to be part of this important
partnership which aims to tackle urgent workforce issues in the NHS, especially
in underserved areas where the need is greatest. Northumbria is a key partner
for this programme of work, with our colleagues leading five of the seven work
streams. By bringing together expertise from nursing and allied health
professions, implementation science, design, occupational psychology and
knowledge mobilisation we will be able to create some truly
interdisciplinary approaches to the biggest workforce challenges
across the sector.
"This programme of work is underpinned by the principles of
co-design, allowing us to support and work with healthcare colleagues in
shaping the future of the workforce across many primary healthcare and
maternity services.
“Adopting this participatory approach to identifying, articulating and
addressing challenges to workforce sustainability will help us to drive real
and lasting change."
The funding is part of the NIHR’s wider investment of £24 million into
five Workforce Research Partnerships (WRPs) across the country.
These partnerships will develop and test innovations to improve the
quality of health and social care services, by tackling issues such as
workplace stress and high staff turnover.
The Newcastle WRP will focus specifically on areas which already
experience problems in access to healthcare, such as GP and maternity services,
due to their remoteness or social deprivation.
Professor Gill Vance, Director of Research in the School of Medicine
at Newcastle University, who is co-leading the partnership, said: “Underserved
areas are likely to be on the sharp end of challenges to workforce
sustainability, and so are priorities for research to understand why problems
arise, and how they may be addressed.
“For our research, we will work with staff and patients in targeted
areas of need to identify what has to change, and help design ways in which
systems, processes or policy can be altered for the better.
“Where possible, we will also support implementation of interventions,
and evaluate their impact through methods including questionnaires, interviews
and consideration of economic impact.”
As well as academics from Newcastle and Northumbria, the partnership
involves researchers at Oxford, Birmingham and York universities, and
colleagues in NHS Integrated Care Boards and Healthwatch networks across
England.
It will also be supported by advisory groups, including staff members,
patients and the public, as well as senior figures in the NHS and other policy
and regulatory organisations.
The WRP will run for five years and will share data, learning and
skills at a national level to ensure the evidence leads to lifesaving and
life-improving patient care.
The WRPs involve 24 universities across England and Wales, five NHS
Trusts, four councils, and five charities and non-profit organisations, working
across a wide range of integrated care system regions.
Professor Lucy Chappell, NIHR Chief Executive, and Chief Scientific
Adviser at the Department for Health and Social Care, said: “Staff are
the backbone of our health and care system. The NIHR is stepping up to fund
high-quality research to understand our workforce needs better.
“These new landmark research partnerships will generate crucial new
research across a range of projects to help improve the quality, organisation
and retention of teams, which will in turn improve the quality of care they
provide.”
In addition to Alison, the Northumbria University academics involved in the project include Dr Peter van der Graaf, Professor Tim Rapley, Dr Matthew Lievesley, Professor Anthony Montgomery and Professor Marco Tomietto.
Northumbria
University is dedicated to reducing health and social inequalities,
contributing to the regional and national workforce and improving social,
economic and health outcomes for the most marginalised in society. Through its
new Centre
for Health and Social Equity, known as CHASE, researchers will be
delivering world-leading health and social equity research and creating
innovative, evidence-based policies and data-driven solutions to bring
impactful change across the region, the UK and globally.
