How many people work in the NHS?
- 12,905 medical and dental staff
- 4,517 consultants including directors of public health
- 170,416 non-medical staff
- 58,463 nurses and health visitors
- 4,001 midwives
- 20,538 scientific, therapeutic and technical staff
- 10,623 allied health professionals
4,436 GPs
- For general information about careers in the NHS, visit NHS Careers
- To view latest jobs in the NHS, visit NHS Jobs
Growing the workforce
The last four years have seen an increase in frontline clinical staff of more than 12,000. But the workforce has to constantly change and adapt, and by 2012 we will have
- 544 more midwives across the North West to achieve the Government’s Maternity Matters plan
- 24 new health centres
- 200 extra GPs in deprived and under-doctored areas
- 534 additional workers providing psychological therapies
Medical and dental graduates continue their training through placements in hospitals and in community health care organisations across the North West under the management of three postgraduate deaneries – Mersey, North Western and Northern. We are also responsible for the training of non-medical staff like nurses and physiotherapists. We work closely with universities in the region to ensure that courses are fit for purpose.
Overview of the Workforce and Education Directorate
The Workforce and Education Directorate’s role is to work with NHS and Social Care Organisations to ensure that they have the right people, with the right skills, in the right place to support patients and the wider population. We are composed of several teams with close links to the North West and Mersey Deaneries.
North Western Deanery
Our team aspires to deliver the very best training and continuing professional development for around 4,000 doctors and dentists, to ensure that they are ready to deliver the vision set out in ‘Healthier Horizons’ and ‘Liberating the NHS’.
Our priority is to ensure that our trainers and training programme directors and competent and confident in their role, providing high quality patient care and high quality practical experience for doctors and dentists in training, supporting and challenging young professionals.
Through the quality management of training programmes and environments, we hope that everyone working in medicine and dentistry in the North West will maintain and develop these high standards through supporting each other and challenging unacceptable practice throughout their working lives. Further information regarding the North Western Deanery is available on our website http://www.nwpgmd.nhs.uk
Mersey Deanery
The Mersey Deanery, like its counterpart, the North Western Deanery, forms an important part of the North West Multi Professional Deanery. The Mersey Deanery is responsible for the training of junior doctors across Merseyside and Cheshire.
This responsibility includes the development and management of the numerous training programmes in General Practice and the medical specialties, the delivery of the curricula set by Colleges, to the standards set by the Regulator – the GMC.
The Deanery is also responsible for the quality management of the training programmes and for the assessment of junior doctors, recommending the issue of their Completed Certificates of Training (CCT). The Deanery works closely with HEIs, Commissioners and Local Health Providers, with a common aim – the development of medical education, hence high quality and safe, patient care. Further information regarding the Mersey Deanery is available on our website www.merseydeanery.nhs.uk
Workforce modernisation
We implement the North West Workforce Strategy, working directly with commissioners of services and providers to analyse their current workforce (Workforce Planning), consider how the workforce can be used most efficiently and cost effectively (Workforce Productivity) and opportunities for modernisation including introducing new roles.
The team also undertakes a monitoring role of providers of health services workforce on behalf of the Department of Health. This work is supported by the electronic Workforce Information Portal (eWIN) which provides opportunities for benchmarking, and sharing good practice.
The team also lead on Health and Work, which includes work to improve the Health of the NHS workforce, establishing work opportunities for socially excluded adults within the NHS.
The Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Team
Our key role is to support the SHA in identifying and eliminating inequality in outcome for NHS service users and for staff as well as within our own organisation.
We provide direction and guidance for NHS organisations in the North West on equalities and human rights in policy and in practice.
Our five-year strategy (2008-2013) Narrowing the Gaps has set five goals for the region as whole to
- increase the diversity and improve the working lives of the NHS workforce
- improve the collection of data to provide information to manage and knowledge to act
- develop the right services, targeted, useable and useful
- move beyond legal compliance to best practice
- develop our equality and diversity specialists and leaders
We have developed tools to support NHS organisations in their equalities work.
These include our Health Equalities Libraries Portal, (HELP), our Health Equality Stakeholder Engagement model to support proper and meaningful consultation with all our equality target groups; and the Equality Performance Improvement Toolkit, which for the first time enables the NHS to measure real improvements in equalities outcomes for patients and service users.
Contact us at equalityanddiversity@northwest.nhs.uk
Commissioning Professional Education Team
The Commissioning and professional Education section leads on NHS education for the North west:
- commissioning pre and post registration for non medical professions from North West Universities through education contracts,
- clinical placements for all professions from North West organisations through learning and development agreements
- supporting workforce development activities through hosted arrangements including development for un registered staff
- promoting education governanceThe team also includes the juniors doctors advisory team, the finance skills development team and the NW Health Care Libraries Unit
Strategic HR Team
Our role is to work across all NHS organisations in the North West to develop capacity and capability in HR and Organisational Development. We work closely with the North West HR Director community to lead on a full range of strategic HR, Leadership and Organisational Development (OD) programmes including:
- The ‘Towards World-Class HR in the NW ’ Project
- The delivery of development programmes and events for the HR community
- Maximising the opportunities afforded by the Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF)
- The provision of a NW regional HR Graduate scheme
- Other strategic HR initiatives including staff engagement and wellbeing
- To support organisations facing changes to their form or services e.g. the North West Clearing House, HR Frameworks
- The team also has a role in maintaining and developing partnership working with staff organisations, through the North West Social partnership Forum
The NHS Skills Academy
This helps to prepare people who want to come into the NHS in non-clinical roles like porters, maintenance and clerical staff by giving them training to upgrade their skills. Many go on to clinical roles like nurses.
The Academy co-ordinates a range of cadet and training programmes with local colleges to offer opportunities for young people (and older people returning to work in the NHS) to develop their confidence, basic skills and experience.
New ways of learning continue to develop and NHS North West is recognised as a leader in this field because we provide facilities such as access to virtual learning and e-learning environments, and have formed links with other organisations who can provide support.
Are you interested in a job in the NHS? Find out more about careers in the NHS
Email the Workforce team at NHS North West: workforce.education@northwest.nhs.uk
Back to the top