Eluned Morgan, Minister for Health and Social Services
A well trained NHS workforce with the right skills is essential to providing sustainable high quality care to people across Wales and improving standards in our health service. Despite the challenges we face today, we continue to invest in the education and training of healthcare professionals in Wales.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the great demand on our NHS in Wales and the continued necessity to increase the training numbers and funding for essential health professionals in 2022/23. That is why, for the eighth consecutive year, funding to support health professional education and training in Wales will increase. The importance of our health and care services has been more apparent than ever throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
£262.295m will be invested in 2022/23; this equates to a 15% increase from 2021/22 which is an extra £18.08m for education and training programmes for healthcare professionals in Wales; £5.26m extra for medical training places, an extra £7.97m to support core GP training numbers and a net increase of £2.72m for pharmacy training across Wales. This continues to be a record level of funding to support the highest ever number of training opportunities in Wales.
I am proud of this government’s record on investing in education and training to support and sustain the health workforce across Wales. The NHS has more people working in it than at any time in its history, all aimed at prevention and care for members of society, across every community in Wales.
The Welsh Government remains committed to providing the NHS with the workforce it needs and to ensuring a sustainable health and social care system, as set out in A Healthier Wales. These additional training places will increase the capacity of the workforce to help the NHS respond to the challenges facing it in the future.
Over the past five years nurse training places have increased by 55.2% and midwives have increased by 96.8%. Tables showing the increase in health professional and medical training places for 2022/23 can be found at Annex A.
Annex A
NHS Wales Education Commissioning and Training Plan for 2022/23
The following tables show the increase in health professional and medical training places for 2022/23.
|
Speciality |
From |
To |
% Increase |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Adult Nursing |
1,540 |
1,651 |
7.2% |
|
Mental Health Nursing |
410 |
483 |
17.8% |
|
Learning Difficulties Nursing |
77 |
87 |
12.9% |
|
BSc. Paramedicine |
75 |
86 |
14.6% |
|
Anaesthetics |
Increase of 3 Higher Anaesthetics posts.
|
|---|---|
|
Intensive Care Medicine |
Increase of 4 Higher Training Programme posts. |
|
Cancer Care |
|
|
Clinical Oncology |
Increase by 4 additional Higher Training posts implementing year 2 of the proposal to expand by 4 posts per year for 5 years. |
|
Medical Oncology |
Increase by 3 additional Higher Training posts implementing year 2 of the proposal to expand by 3 posts per year for 5 years. |
|
Palliative Medicine |
To increase Palliative Medicine training posts by 2 posts for August 2022 and a further 2 posts for August 2023. |
|
Small Specialty Review |
|
|
Community Sexual & Reproductive Health (CSRH) |
To temporarily convert one of the Genito Urinary Medicine (GUM) posts to CSRH using existing funding to enable an additional appointment into CSRH for 2021 if possible but if not 2022. To recommend an increase of 2 CSRH posts for August 2022 To explore options for increasing exposure to both CSRH and GUM on the Foundation Programme and for GUM within Internal Medicine. |
|
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) |
To increase the OMFS training programme by 2 posts in August 2022. |
|
Clinical Genetics |
To increase the Clinical Genetics Training programme by 2 posts in August 2022. Note - agreement and temporary funding was identified to enable one post to commence in August 2021. |
|
Clinical Neurophysiology |
To await the recommendations of the Neurophysiology workforce review. This is considered a fragile and vulnerable training specialty. |
|
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CPT) |
To retain the 2 posts in CPT and review for 2023. To explore moving one post to North Wales. To increase exposure to CPT during Internal Medicine training to increase recruitment in the specialty. |
|
Diagnostic Specialties |
|
|
Medical Microbiology/ Infectious Diseases |
Increase of 3 Medical Microbiology/Infectious Diseases posts implementing year 3 of a plan to increase posts every year for 5 years. |
|
Clinical Radiology |
To support the recommended expansion as required to appoint 22 trainees for the 2022 intake with 20 in the South and 2 in north Wales. To create an INR post which will rotate as required to specialist centres in England to enable Welsh trainees to obtain this much needed training. |
|
Histopathology |
To increase Histopathology training in North Wales by 1 post for August 2022. To undertake an urgent review exploring solutions to the training capacity challenges within Histopathology and Paediatrics and Perinatal Pathology to make recommendations to Chief Executives in June 2022. |
|
Mental Health |
|
|
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry |
North Wales – to increase by 2 posts for 2022. Note - agreement and temporary funding was identified to enable one of these posts to commence in August 2021 as part of a phased introduction. South Wales – to increase by 2 posts for 2022 and to review further for 2023 once the HEIW review on Mental Health workforce has reported its findings. |
|
Old age psychiatry |
To increase by 2 training posts for 2022, 2 for 2023 and a further 2 for 2024. With a review once the HEIW review on Mental Health workforce has reported its findings. |
|
General Adult Psychiatry |
To make no changes to the current level of posts on the General Adult Psychiatry programme and to review further for 2023 once the HEIW review on Mental Health workforce has reported its findings. |
|
Forensic Psychiatry
|
To make no changes to the current level of posts on the Forensic Psychiatry programme and to review further for 2023 once the HEIW review on Mental Health workforce has reported its findings. |
|
Learning Disabilities
|
To convert the shared LD/CAMHS post in North Wales to LD thereby increasing the programme by 1 post. To review further for 2023 once the HEIW review on Mental Health workforce has reported its findings. |
|
Foundation, Core and Higher Programme Alignment |
|
|
Foundation |
To increase the number of Foundation Year 1 posts by 30 and Foundation Year 2 posts by 30 for August 2022 as detailed in the Foundation Expansion Business Case. |
|
The Acute Care Common Stem (ACCS) Emergency Medicine |
The ACCS Programme is expanded by a further 4 posts for 2022 and a further 2 posts in 2023. This will complete the development of the Bangor Programme and enable a new Programme in Cardiff to be created to maximise current training capacity. |
|
The Acute Care Common Stem ACCS Anaesthetics |
5 new posts are to be created in Emergency Medicine and Acute Medicine to enable the creation of a ACCS Anaesthetics programmes to support the alignment with Intensive Care Training |
|
Anaesthetics |
Increase of 5 Core Training Programme posts to ensure alignment between Core and Higher programmes and to meet training curriculum and less than full time training (LTFT) requirements going forward. |
|
Internal Medicine |
To increase Internal Medicine training by 12 posts for August 2022 |
|
Core Psychiatry |
To increase Core Psychiatry Training by 8 posts for August 2022. |
|
Additional workforce priority areas |
|
|
Public Health Medicine
|
Recruitment into existing training posts is to be maximised and to support this funding for 2 posts is required for 2022 and for 3 posts in 2023. Work should be undertaken to maximise the current interest in the specialty from Junior Doctors. This includes the provision of Foundation Training Placements in Public Health Medicine within the Foundation expansion programme |
|
Rheumatology |
To increase Rheumatology training by 2 posts for August 2022 and a further 2 posts for August 2023. |
|
Gastroenterology – Hepatology Specialist post |
To create 1 Hepatology Sub-specialty post for August 2022 with 3 months of this time spent is a specialist centre outside of Wales. |
|
Paediatrics |
Increase of 4 ST3 posts to enable the expanded numbers of trainees created in 2020 and 2021 to progress through the training programme and to front-load the programme to maximise %WTE from ST4 onwards. |
|
General Practice |
Maintain the current target of 160 intake per annum, with an option to over-recruit to 200 when feasible. |