The importance of education for a new primary care workforce.

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© 2 01 5 M A H ea lth ca re L td It is well recognised that the NHS currently faces significant financial hardship, and the increasing demand for its services, without further annual efficiencies or an increase in funding, will produce an imbalance between available resources and patient need of almost £30 billion per year by 2020–21 (NHS England, 2014). Change is needed on all three aspects of demand, efficiency and funding to sustain the current high-quality service. Ever since the publication of the NHS Plan (Department of Health (DH), 2000), DH has promoted radical change with new ways of working, new models of care and to maximise the contribution of the wide range of health professionals by working more collaboratively to ensure care is efficient, effective and cost effective. The recent focus on transformation in the acute sector has paved the way for radical change in the delivery of primary care. With several attempts to reorganise primary care, —for example, the Wanless’ review (2002) recommending a radical improvement in prevention and public health, and in 2005 the introduction of 3000 new community matrons to integrate the health and social care services (DH, 2005)—the recent publication of The future of primary care (Primary Care Workforce Commission (PCWC), 2015) proposes a much more radical reform. Drawing on the Five Year Forward View (NHS England, 2014) that identified the changes required to address the current challenges facing the NHS, The future of primary care sets out a vision for the new primary care workforce and has significant implications for the education of health and social care professionals. There is clear evidence that people are living longer, often with complex long-term conditions (Ham et al, 2012), and the media are quick to portray the changing pattern in public health with one in five adults still smoking, a third drinking too much alcohol and just under two thirds overweight or obese (NHS England, 2014). Nevertheless, there is clear acknowledgement that investment in primary care has fallen well short of investment in the acute sector, in spite of increasing expectations (PWCW 2015). If we Elizabeth Rosser