Understanding the cardiovascular healthcare workforce
We’re exploring the opportunities and challenges facing the cardiovascular healthcare workforce.
What’s on this page
- Project background
- Objectives
- Evidence review and stakeholder engagement
- Audit of NHS workforce datasets
- Policy development and parliamentary engagement
- Workforce census
- Get in touch
Project background
There are worrying shortages in the cardiovascular healthcare workforce. As demand for care grows and changes over time, the effects of these shortages will only get worse.
Our research into the impact of the pandemic shows that the cardiovascular workforce is one of the most important factors affecting patient care and something heart patients want to see addressed.
The cardiovascular healthcare workforce is essential if the NHS is to:
- transform patient care
- meet national aims for cardiovascular disease
- address backlogs of care in a reasonable timeframe
- reduce health inequalities.
That’s why we’re carrying out a programme of research and policy development to better understand who makes up this workforce, the challenges it faces and what it needs for the future.
Read more about our research into the impact of workforce shortages during the pandemic.
Objectives
- Build a better understanding of the current cardiovascular healthcare workforce. This will help with national and regional workforce planning.
- Raise awareness of the gaps in workforce data and the need for better data collection processes and analysis.
- Encourage more investment in, and prioritisation of, the UK’s cardiovascular workforce.
Evidence review and stakeholder engagement
To start with, we compiled the latest information about the workforce from published and unpublished research and official NHS England statistics.
We also interviewed over 30 professional organisations and workforce bodies. This included most of the leading UK cardiovascular workforce associations.
We wanted to understand:
- what information already exists on the cardiovascular workforce
- what the workforce needs so it can significantly improve services for heart patients.
Everyone we spoke to agreed that:
- there is a crisis in cardiovascular care
- not enough staff are being trained to keep up with demand
- there is not enough information about the cardiovascular workforce
- there’s no integrated approach to tracking changes and needs over time.
Some professional societies and royal colleges have good data about their own workforce speciality. But they and workforce planners do not think this is all being brought together and analysed to support policy and practice.
They were clear that the NHS needs a strong, integrated process for collecting and compiling data about the workforce to calculate need.
Audit of NHS workforce datasets
We analysed publicly available data in the UK. This included datasets from:
- the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID)
- NHS England
- NHS Digital (now merged with NHS England).
We also looked at censuses and surveys from professional societies and royal colleges.
This audit identified large gaps in workforce data across the UK.
Our main findings were:
- Significantly more, and better quality, data is available about doctors, especially consultants or higher speciality trainees, than about other job roles. This is true for both workforce size and demographics.
- There is very little data on all other members of the multidisciplinary heart team. For example: speciality nurses, cardiac physiologists, clinical scientists, and operational and support staff.
- It’s hard to tell how many nurses and physiologists specialise in working with heart patients. This is because some of them will not be classed as cardiac specialists in NHS HR databases. Some will have other ‘areas of work’ which are not cardiovascular specific, such as ‘medicine’ or ‘outpatients’.
Policy development and parliamentary engagement
Based on what we’ve learned, we’re developing policy recommendations on the cardiovascular healthcare workforce. We’re also encouraging the Government to address the challenges the workforce faces.
We continue to:
- raise the profile of the cardiovascular workforce
- highlight the urgent need for better NHS data collection and workforce planning.
Read our submission to the Health and Social Care Select Committee inquiry on workforce (PDF).
Workforce census
Our research so far has revealed important gaps in NHS workforce data collection. Data about cardiology staff who are not doctors is particularly lacking.
We want to raise awareness of the need for better, more comprehensive data collection on the cardiovascular workforce.
To do this, we’re carrying out a census of cardiologists and specialist cardiac nurses at eligible NHS trusts.
We expect this work will also help show the current challenges in collecting data on the workforce.
Using the information we collect, we aim to produce a dataset on cardiologists and specialist cardiac nurses in England. It will include information on:
- sub-specialities
- working patterns
- vacancies
- demographic information such as age and sex.
If our data collection is effective, we will produce an interactive digital tool to help integrated care systems and NHS trusts plan their cardiac workforce.
This will be the most comprehensive collection of cardiovascular workforce data at sub-speciality level ever collected.
We hope it will support national and regional health systems in their cardiovascular workforce planning.
Find out more about the Cardiac Workforce Census.
Get in touch
If you have any comments or questions about the work we’re doing, you can email us at [email protected].