Northern Ireland

Last chance to save parts of health service from collapse

Nurses and doctors living in the Republic and working in the north are "anxious" and want reassurance about their future after Brexit
Nurses and doctors living in the Republic and working in the north are "anxious" and want reassurance about their future after Brexit Nurses and doctors living in the Republic and working in the north are "anxious" and want reassurance about their future after Brexit

HEALTH chiefs have revealed plans which they admit are likely to be the last chance to save important services from collapse.

The Department of Health acknowledges, in today's Workforce Strategy 2026, "the consequences of failure to achieve the aims and objectives of this strategy are grave" and would see continued increased in "already unsustainable rate of agency and locum expenditure" and further waiting lists rises.

"Health and social care services will become unsustainable, and the longer this continues, the more difficult it will be to transform these services."

Designed to address issues with supply, recruitment and retention of staff by 2026, the department said it is "a deliberately ambitious strategy".

It includes three `action plans', with "oversight mechanisms" to monitor the department's progress.

The document has been drawn in part from detailed consultation with staff, which revealed serious concerns among medical professionals.

These include a warning that some GPs "consider the role is at `tipping point' - the job has become undoable; expectations are too high, with too much to do in too little time".

Nurses and doctors living in the Republic and working in the north are "anxious" and want reassurance about their future after Brexit.

Meanwhile, "significant" consultant vacancies are because of "a combination of lower remuneration, workload, lack of autonomy and underinvestment in services", which makes the role less attractive in the Northern Ireland than the UK and Ireland.

Key targets include:

- Non-salary incentive programmes to recruit/retain staff and deal with pressures in less popular specialties and locations.

- A new regional staff health and wellbeing policy and more investment in occupational health services

- A work-life balance policy for health and social care workers.

- Simplified employment arrangements - possibly a single employer for all health and social care staff

John D Woods of BMA NI said, as outlined, the strategy "will, over time, help address serious problems among the medical workforce".

"The pressure healthcare staff are under on a daily basis cannot be overstated and reducing this pressure is central to making the health and social care sector somewhere people want to work," he said.

Dr Woods warned the plans need "to be coupled with a reduction in waiting lists, pay parity and more staff on the ground".