Workforce and patient safety

The workforce challenges faced by the NHS in England present a significant risk to patient safety and staff wellbeing.

These challenges include inadequate interoperable IT infrastructure, skills shortages in key areas of the NHS and a mismatch between demand for hospital care and the supply of staff and other resources to meet that demand.

National reports and research have highlighted that these challenges are influenced by a shortage of NHS staff, and that there is a need to focus on recruitment and retention and consider the most appropriate workforce models for health and care in the future. To address these previously identified challenges, we can use our unique system-level perspective to propose ways to improve working conditions for NHS staff. We anticipate this in turn can help to improve patient safety.

We’re undertaking four investigations that consider how working conditions in the NHS can be optimised to support patient safety, while maintaining and improving staff wellbeing:

• Workforce and patient safety: temporary staff – involvement in patient safety investigations.
• Workforce and patient safety: digital tools for online consultation in general practice.
• Workforce and patient safety: the digital environment.
• Workforce and patient safety: primary and community care coordination, for people with complex health and care needs.

Each individual investigation will produce an investigation report that may make safety recommendations, safety observations or identify local learning to inform improvements in support of patient safety and staff wellbeing. So far, we have published two of four investigation reports, with the rest to follow during 2024.

The findings from all four investigations, and additional intelligence, may then contribute to a future national learning report. This would allow for common themes or issues seen across the investigations to be aggregated and further safety recommendations, safety observations or local learning to be identified.

Closure notice

The prioritising patient care investigation, which is part of the wider programme of work on the theme of workforce and patient safety, has been closed.