The Strategic Workforce Plan for Primary Care was formally launched today (15 May 2024) at the HEIW Primary and Community Care Education and Training Conference in Cardiff.
Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) and the Strategic Programme for Primary Care (SPPC) jointly developed the Strategic Workforce Plan for Primary Care to support the full implementation of the Primary Care Model for Wales (PCMW), and the actions set out in A Healthier Wales. The plan aligns with the themes in the Health and Social Care Workforce Strategy.
The Plan covers the workforce providing primary care services at either a local, cluster or national level, including services delivered by independent contractors, managed primary care services and staff employed by Health Boards across the 24/7 period. The specific primary care actions in this plan are based on output from the stakeholder engagement but also informed by research and workforce intelligence on the development of a sustainable workforce.
2024/25 will be the start of a 5 year programme to deliver twenty-six key actions, identified in the plan, to address the workforce challenges and opportunities within primary care. These actions build on a separate profession based plan for pharmacy (published in 2023) and a dental specific workforce plan (currently being finalised) alongside other sector specific workforce plans and complements actions within the SPPC such as the Primary Care and Community Nursing Framework (published in 2024), the Multi-Professional Framework for Integrated Working (published in 2023) and the National AHP Framework (published in 2021).
Any comments or queries should be directed to heiw@wales.nhs.uk / SPPC@wales.nhs.uk and please title the email ‘Strategic Workforce Plan for Primary Care’.