19 January 2023
A landmark survey of Emergency Medicine staff in Wales has found that there are far too few clinicians to cope with demand within the stricken health service.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s ‘Wales’ Emergency Medicine Workforce Census 2023’ is an in-depth analysis of the state of the Emergency Medicine workforce, providing an insight into the working patterns of clinicians and allowing a forecast to be made around the future workforce needs of Emergency Departments in Wales.
The census had responses from all 12 major Emergency Departments in Wales and found:
Dr Suresh Pillai, Vice President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Wales, said: “The findings of this vital census are stark and really shows why Emergency Care in Wales is broken; we simply have too few staff.
“We are way off the RCEM recommended ratio of one WTE Consultant per 4000 attendances. This means existing consultants are stretched extremely thinly in Emergency Departments. We need more consultants for the safe supervision of trainees and junior staff.
“It’s no wonder that many are exhausted, burnt out and looking to leave. Exhorting staff to work harder and ‘find efficiencies’ to improve care just won’t wash – they are already at their limits, doing their very best. Any service that is not properly resourced will eventually collapse, and this survey makes it abundantly clear that the crisis emergency care finds itself is down to having too few staff, attempting to deliver too much. That’s not the fault of patients or because there is ‘too much demand’, it’s the result of a failure to plug the significant gaps in staffing and address retention issues.
“We need sustainable long-term workforce planning to ensure there is a pipeline of doctors coming through. We are way behind where we need to be in terms of staffing and things will only get worse in the years to come if this isn’t addressed. Nearly one fifth of the consultant workforce plan to retire in the next six years, but departments are saying they need at least 75 more right now.
“We’re keen to work with the First Minister, Mark Drakeford, to discuss the Emergency Care crisis and need for long-term workforce planning; the Welsh government must provide the funding to increase the EM consultant workforce by an additional 100 consultants as a matter of urgency, and to facilitate this we must see an expansion to the number of EM training places offered by 15 and maintained year on year.”
The census also found that junior doctors were also being overstretched:
Dr Suresh Pillai said: “Junior doctors are being asked to do too much and we need to see an expansion in training places as soon as possible, to spread the load and help fewer feel the need to drop out of training.
“It’s clear that current conditions are having an impact. Increasing numbers of trainees are choosing to work less than full time in an effort to achieve more sustainable careers. This is entirely understandable, but it has an impact on care; people choosing to leave or work less means an ever-greater burden is put on existing staff, resulting in compromised care and burnout, meaning they want to do the same. We have to address this urgently and make the specialty – and health care – more attractive to trainees.
“The total number of consultants that we would like to see by 2027 as a minimum is 225, but current trainee numbers are not substantial enough to reach this aspirational target following the training cycle, during which some will naturally drop out. In addition to the extra training places needed, the government must look to launch an extensive recruitment campaign to attract trainees to train and work in Wales. Without these places and a concerted effort to increase staffing, the future of Emergency Care in Wales looks very bleak indeed. We hope the Welsh government recognises this and we hope we can work together to improve conditions for staff and the quality of care for patients.”
-ENDS-
Notes to editor
RCEM Wales: Wales’ Emergency Medicine Workforce Census 2023
Launch event at Senedd
On Thursday 19 January 2023, The Royal College of Emergency Medicine will be hosting an event at the Senedd to launch our very first Welsh Emergency Medicine Workforce Census Report. The report is a deep dive into the current and future workforce needs for A&Es in Wales. This event will also be a chance for Members of the Senedd to talk to clinicians who are best placed to describe the current state of emergency medicine and the impact of the workforce crisis on patients.
Background
To better understand the nature of operational pressures on Emergency Medicine staff, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine carried out a census of Emergency Departments in Wales on behalf of the National Board for Wales.
The specialty of Emergency Medicine suffers from burnout more so than any other specialty, resulting in high attrition rates and many staff choosing to work less than full time. Although the numbers of clinicians working in EDs in Wales have increased over the years, they have still not kept up with the pace of the consistent rise in demand placed on Emergency Departments.
This census is the first of its kind in Wales within Emergency Medicine. It seeks to understand staffing numbers and the true extent of the workforce pressures present in Emergency Departments across the country. In doing so, the College can influence effectively with the knowledge of exactly which provisions must be made to secure a robust and sufficient workforce for the future.
Methodology
The data collected throughout the undertaking of this census coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. This has inevitably affected both the collection and analysis process. While the number of staff in post may not have been significantly impacted, the quantity and type of demand that Emergency Departments saw during this time varied greatly.
The census was created using SurveyMonkey and consisted of 64 questions. The questions that participants were presented with varied depending on each participant’s personal questioning route. In 2021, a PDF version of the census with all 64 questions was then sent out to all ED Clinical Leads ahead of the census going live. This was to ensure that respondents had acquired and collated the necessary information and data to complete the census and to encourage accurate answers rather than estimations.
Respondents were asked to complete the survey as per their departments staffing position in the summer of 2021. Clinical leads were sent an initial email, attached with the PDF, explaining the purpose of the census and what the information would be used for. After two weeks another email was sent out to the leads with a hyperlink to the live census. Over the following months, reminder emails were sent on a regular basis to encourage participation. We received responses from all 12 major Emergency Departments in Wales.
