Healthcare organisations think innovatively about skills gaps
28th July, 2010
Healthcare professions are addressing the majority of skills gaps through local providers and are looking to multi-skill staff to address skills shortages, according to a report from the Plymouth Employment and Skills Board.
The study: ‘Plymouth’s Medical and Healthcare Sector Skills Report’, reviewed current information available on skills needs within the health, medical and care sectors and identified skill requirements.
The report further identified a number of areas where attracting skill sets was difficult. This was due to a number of factors:
• employees lacking the basic skills of Maths and English
• with economic conditions in the UK worsening, the flow of migrant workers to the region is likely to cease and may reverse, leading to skills shortages
• the industry has difficulty in recruiting young people into science, technology, engineering and maths-related careers
• an ageing workforce is causing significant replacement demand issues
• there is difficulty attracting specialist skilled professionals to the South West
Graham Morris, Project Director of the Plymouth Employment and Skills Board, said: “PESB has commissioned this report both to inform us of the skills needs of one of Plymouth’s priority sectors, and to enable us to give a heads up to education and training providers as they become increasingly focused on setting up provision which truly responds to employer needs.
“Public funding is going to become much tighter in coming years, and recent White Papers make it clear that the intention is to direct scarce resources towards provision which measurably contributes to local employment needs. We will do whatever we can to ensure that employer priorities for skills are effectively communicated to the providers to assist with their planning.”
Carolyn Bruce-Spencer, Plymouth’s Medical and Healthcare Sector Co-ordinator and author of the report said: “What is clear from my interviews with key employers from the sector, is that organisations are thinking differently about the way they do business, in order to meet the challenges of the future. Employers are looking to re-structure and multi-skill their staff in order to utilise resources more effectively and efficiently and a large number of employers are using local training providers to address this need.”
The report, which interviewed a sample of principal employers in the Plymouth travel-to-work area, divides the sector into Bioscience, Skills for Health and Skills for Care sectors. Bioscience firms, which include bio-medical companies, have a difficulty recruiting nurses skilled in A&E, coronary care and anaesthetics and project managers with research skills and experience.
However, the majority of employers in this area predicted their businesses would grow in the future and are looking at multi-skilling staff and promoting ‘buddying and mentoring’ schemes to ensure that the appropriate skills needs are in place to meet the growth in demand.
Skills for Health includes NHS hospitals, Primary Care Trusts, medical schools, private hospitals and clinics and small private sector providers such as opticians.
Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust (PHNT) – which manages Derriford Hospital – said it had experienced difficulty in sourcing pharmacists from the UK in the past and as a consequence had recruited from Poland. Currently the Trust has been able to recruit appropriate staff.
Skills gaps experienced by this sector included numeracy and literacy.
PHNT recently announced it will be employing 150 apprentices as part of the National Apprenticeship Scheme. They will be mainly working within the business and administration departments.
The Skills for Care sector includes care home and domiciliary agencies. The employers interviewed advised that the current financial climate had not had an effect on their approach to training, with one employer stating that training had been increased in order to meet the new Care Quality Commission (CQC) standards. Future training needs include multi-skilling of existing staff and identifying staff to undertake NVQ’s - Levels 2&3.
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