Recruitment and Retention in the NHS

Part of 4. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 4:02 pm on 31 January 2023.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 4:02, 31 January 2023

Thanks very much. Well, it is true that we have more staff than ever employed in the NHS in Wales. What you will be aware of is that, actually, we have never seen demands on the service like this, and if we're honest, that demand is only going to go in one direction as we have an ageing population. The demand is going to increase. So, I think we've got to be very honest about the strain on the system currently, but actually, we do need to have a very genuine conversation amongst ourselves, with the public as well, about what the implications of this are for the future.

What I have done is to develop a national workforce implementation plan, and I'm pleased to say that I'm going to meet the deadline that I set myself, so it is going to be published today. Within that, there will be a whole series of actions that we plan to put in place in order to make sure that we can do more to retain the staff that we've got; to look at how we can ethically recruit nurses from overseas; to look at how we can deploy a reservist force in Wales; to look at how we can build up and develop the existing network of volunteers; and how we can create an all-Wales collaborative bank to make sure that we can create some more support to avoid paying very expensive agency nurses.