District nursing workforce issues

The challenges facing the district nursing workforce cannot be divorced from what is happening elsewhere in the world as the current UK healthcare workforce challenges echo those globally. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2023) has asserted that the global healthcare workforce has declined significantly over the last decade independent of the COVID-19 pandemic (18 million in 2013; 15 million in 2020; projected 10 million in 2030). However, Boniol et al (2022) have estimated that there were in fact 29 million nurses globally and there will be a shortage of 4.5 million nurses by 2030. Globally, the healthcare workforce is rapidly ageing, especially in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, including the UK. To maintain the 2020 healthcare workforce density, the WHO (2023) has asserted that an additional 13.7 million healthcare workers will be needed through to 2030 within OECD countries to grow their own workforce and become less reliant on migration from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).