Yes / Aim
This aim of this scoping review was to undertake a detailed review of the pertinent literature
examining strategic workforce planning in the health and social care sectors. The scoping review was
tasked to address the following three questions:
1. How is strategic health and social care workforce planning currently undertaken?
2. What models, methods, and tools are available for supporting strategic health and
social care workforce planning?
3. What are the most effective methods for strategic health and social care workforce
planning?
Methods
The scoping review utilised the five-stage scoping review framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley
(2005). This includes identifying the research question; identifying relevant studies; study selection;
charting the data and collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. The search included a range
of databases and key search terms included “workforce” OR “human resource*” OR “personnel” OR
“staff*”. Relevant documents were selected through initially screening titles and s, followed
by full text screening of potentially relevant documents.
Results
The search returned 6105 unique references. Based on title and screening, 654 were
identified as potentially relevant. Screening of full texts resulted in 115 items of literature being
included in the synthesis. Both national and international literature covers strategic workforce
planning, with all continents represented, but with a preponderance from high income nations. The
emphasis in the literature is mainly on the healthcare workforce, with few items on social care.
Medical and dental workforces are the predominate groups covered in the literature, although nursing
and midwifery are also discussed. Other health and social care workers are less represented. A variety
of categories of workforce planning methods are noted in the literature that range from determining
the workforce using supply and demand, practitioner to population ratios, needs based approach, the
utilisation of methods such as horizon scanning, modelling, and scenario planning, together with
mathematical and statistical modelling. Several of the articles and websites include specific workforce
planning models that are nationally and internationally recognised, e.g., the workload indicators of
staffing needs (WISN), Star model and the Six Step Methodology. These models provide a series of
steps to help with workforce planning and tend to take a more strategic view of the process. Some of
the literature considers patient safety and quality in relation to safe staffing numbers and patient
acuity. The health and social care policies reviewed include broad actions to address workforce
planning, staff shortages or future service developments and advocate a mixture of developing new
roles, different ways of working, flexibility, greater integrated working and enhanced used of digital
technology. However, the policies generally do not include workforce models or guidance about how
to achieve these measures. Overall, there is an absence in the literature of studies that evaluate what
are the most effective methods for strategic health and social care planning.
Recommendations
The literature suggests the need for the implementation of a strategic approach to workforce
planning, utilising a needs-based approach, including horizon scanning and scenarios. This could
involve adoption of a recognised workforce planning model that incorporates the strategic elements
required for workforce planning and a ‘one workforce’ approach across health and social care.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/18996 |
| Date | 07 June 2022 |
| Creators | Prowse, Julie M., Sutton, Claire, Eyers, Emma, Montague, Jane, Faisal, Muhammad, Neagu, Daniel, Elshehaly, Mai, Randell, Rebecca |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Working paper, Published version |
| Rights | © 2022 The University of Bradford. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, CC-BY |
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