Quality Education for a healthier Scotland Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning Nursing & Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning Introduction to Workforce Planning and Staff Deployment

Quality Education for a healthier Scotland Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning What is Workforce Planning? the process for estimating the required health workforce to meet future health service requirements and the development of strategies to meet those requirements (for a balanced workforce) “At its simplest, effective workforce planning ensures you will have a workforce: – of the right size – with the right skills and diversity – organised in the right way – within the budget that you can afford to deliver the services you need to provide the best patient care.” (National Workforce Projects)

Quality Education for a healthier Scotland Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning Dimensions of Developing the Nurse Workforce (RCN, 2003) Planning - designing patterns of staff mixes and utilisation in line with strategic policy goals Production - the supply of nurses including all aspects of nursing and midwifery education Management - covers all matters relating to the employment, use and motivation of nursing staff – determines the productivity and coverage of different nursing services – and their capacity to retain staff

Quality Education for a healthier Scotland Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning Advantages of Workforce Planning identify shortages and surpluses and prevent staffing crises define tasks and roles and encourage teamwork contribute to ensuring patient safety by having the right staff skills in place to deliver effective care identify drivers of both demand and supply establish workforce education and training needs provide for service development and changing healthcare needs

Quality Education for a healthier Scotland Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning Phases of Workforce Planning 1.Short term - ensuring there is sufficient staff to cope with the expected workload, i.e. rostering 2.Medium term - small adjustments i.e. re-evaluate your requirements for any vacancy, e.g. skill mix 3.Long term - manpower planning whereby decisions are taken in the longer term regarding staffing i.e. due to service change or development for a 4.Operational - decisions taken about the deployment of staff that are actually on duty