BTS publishes new report - A respiratory workforce for the future

The British Thoracic Society has today published a report that looks at the vital importance of the multi-professional respiratory team, highlights the additional staffing required across all respiratory professions and calls for a number of changes in resourcing, training and commissioning that must be put in place to ensure the NHS has a sustainable respiratory workforce.

The report “A Respiratory Workforce for the Future” highlights how the key to sustainable, holistic care for respiratory patients, is an effectively staffed respiratory workforce, across all its professions, and tries to quantify how the respiratory workforce should look like today.

Dr Paul Walker, BTS Chair, added:

“Optimal patient care is delivered by the right person at the right time in the right place. We must ensure that patients with lung disease are looked after by respiratory teams and a sustainable respiratory workforce now and in the future.

“Without the workforce to deliver respiratory services we cannot provide what patients and their carers need. Every profession within the respiratory multi-disciplinary team has a major staff shortfall and identifies this as their number one challenge.”

The report will be useful to local services and commissioning groups, providing them with a reference guide to the number of healthcare professionals needed for the safe and efficient delivery of respiratory care.

Far from focusing only on staff numbers, it also highlights that to remain sustainable in the future, the NHS must put more emphasis on admission prevention and make more use of the innovative models of care pioneered by respiratory professionals over the past years, such as remote clinics, virtual wards, online multidisciplinary team meetings, integrating care and extending services into the community.

Dr Charlotte Addy, Chair, BTS Workforce and Service Development Committee added:

“The innovative holistic patient centred care which is the hallmark of the care delivered by respiratory teams is under threat from workforce shortages, burnout, and a system breaking under seasonal and pandemic pressures. 

“To support our current and future workforce, and provide the best care for our patients, creating a dynamic, sustainable team-based approach to workforce planning and service design must be our highest priority.”