Written question WQ97406
- Asked by
- James EvansConservative
- To be answered by
- Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
- Tabled
- Due
- Answered
- Time to answer
- 7 days
Question
How is the Welsh Government using its strategic influence to direct health boards to collaboratively solve the national haematology workforce crisis?
Answer
Answered by Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) is responsible for developing the annual education and training plan for healthcare professionals. Workforce planning, recruitment, and retention are the responsibility of individual health boards. HEIW works in close collaboration with health boards to ensure education and training provision is aligned with current and future workforce needs.
To improve retention within the existing haematology workforce, the national retention programme was launched in December 2023 and is led by HEIW and delivered locally.
It identifies specialty-specific retention baselines and improvement priorities to foster compassionate leadership and supportive working environments. A suite of dashboards, toolkits, case studies, and masterclasses has been developed and shared via the national retention programme hub.
National and local retention leads are working closely with clinical and service leaders to embed best practices and to strengthen retention across pathology specialties, including haematology