Recent manpower trends in Northern Ireland

Abstract

Attention has recently been drawn to a disturbing lack of available manpower information at national level by Hutt et al. (1985). Hutt and her colleagues had great difficulty in obtaining national estimates of wastage in the nursing profession and had further difficulty in obtaining the numbers of those who rejoined the profession after a period out of service. There is, of course, a distinction between manpower at national level and at local level. At national level, leavers are those who leave the Health Service. At local level, leavers are those who leave the local payroll but these leavers may immediately join the payroll of another district or region. Almost no information is available on flows between and within districts and regions. Considerable attention was paid to manpower considerations by the recent Commission on Nursing Education of the Royal College of Nursing of the United Kingdom. Their report “The Education of Nurses: A New Dispensation” commented that relatively accurate manpower information was available from Northern Ireland. The DHSS in Northern Ireland has, for some years, been maintaining a database on nurse manpower derived from information on the DHSS payroll. This database has been maintained through the Centre for Applied Health Studies at the University of Ulster, by updating quarterly payroll returns and producing routine information from this database. While it would be conceded that a payroll is a far from ideal source on which to base manpower planning, this source has nonetheless provided relatively accurate information which has been helpful in planning the service. Northern Ireland may well be something of a special case in manpower considerations. It is a relatively self-contained unit and the mobility of nurses in and out of the Province would probably not equate to that found between regions in the rest of the U.K. It is not suggested, therefore, that the trends revealed in this paper would necessarily apply widely across the United Kingdom. It is likely, however, that some trends and movements relating to particular grades may well have applicability elsewhere. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the information which can be provided from the DHSS payroll information and to describe from this source some recent manpower trends in Northern Ireland.