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Paediatric workforce information and evidence library

Workforce Information team
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We have collated paediatric workforce information in the UK - both from RCPCH and publicly available sources - and displayed as interactive maps as well as an 'evidence library'. These aim to support College, members, workforce planners and other stakeholders, and are regularly updated.
Last modified
31 August 2023
Post date
25 October 2022
Table of contents
Contents

Introducing our workforce information maps and graphs

Using data that are publicly available and data collected by the College, the following interactive maps and graphs provide information on the child health population, paediatric admissions and emergency admissions, and NHS Trust or Health Board organisations and Community Trusts in England.

We strive to keep the data as up to date as possible, however due to a wide range of sources and differing release dates, this may not always be the case. Data should also be interpreted with some degree of caution given the variability in usage of terms at local level. Large updates will be carried out quarterly.

Next update is scheduled for September 2023 and will feature:

  • Paediatric consultant headcount and full time equivalent in England, Scotland, and Wales
  • Community waiting times
  • New admission figures
  • Vacancy rates information

We are expanding the information on this page, and invite your feedback on what you'd find useful - so please get in touch on workforce@rcpch.ac.uk.

All admissions and emergency admission data and sourced form NHS Digital Hospital Episode Statistics.

Child population

This map shows the number of children in the UK by age groups and regional breakdowns for England. Population statistics are extracted from the 2021 UK Census and refer to mid-year estimates. See map in new browser tab.

Admissions and emergency admissions

All admissions and emergency admission data, as well as full time equivalent (FTE) are and sourced form NHS Digital.

Information gathered by the Local Government Association and their partners shows about 35% of all admissions in NHS England are classified as emergency admissions, costing around £11 billion per year2 .

This chart compares all admissions for all UK nations between 2017-18 and 2021-22 in paediatrics3 .

See chart in new browser tab

The map below shows the total number of finished (paediatric) consultant episodes (FCE) in relation to the child population for each nation or England region. The population data used for each year was the latest mid-year population estimates for children aged 15 or younger.4 See maps in new browser tab

Bed occupancy

Please note that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital capacity had to be re-organised in 2020-21, with staff and beds being deployed in different ways than in previous years. Caution is therefore advised when comparing 2020-21 data to earlier releases for all nations.

England

The bed information in the following section is taken from the Urgent and Emergency Care Daily Situation Reports - Critical care and General & Acute Beds, which gathers data from acute trusts and includes information on bed availability for adult and paediatric general and acute beds, paediatric intensive care, and neonatal intensive care.

Figures below display these data as heatmaps for paediatric general and acute beds, paediatric intensive care, and neonatal intensive care. Hovering on each region will display the number of available beds and the percentage of beds that are occupied.

Bed occupancy: devolved nations

With regards to the UK Devolved Nations, data by specialty was available for both occupied and available beds from each nation's public body.

The maps below show the percentage of quarterly paediatric occupied beds as a heatmap. Hovering on each region will display 'tooltips' with the percentage as well as the number of available beds and the number of occupied beds in paediatrics.

Northern Ireland

Data for Northern Ireland was extracted from Department of Health Northern Ireland Outpatients statistics for paediatric ongoing waits.

See maps for NI in new browser tab

Scotland

The figure below displays bed data collected from Public Health Scotland and filtered by paediatric specialty.

See maps for Scotland in a new browser tab

Wales

The figure below was created with data from Digital Health and Social Care Wales for paediatrics.

See maps for Wales in a new browser tab

Waiting times

This section contains a roundup of waiting times data that children and young people are experiencing across the four countries of the UK.

England

The information displayed below is sourced from NHSE consultant referral to treatment waiting times (incomplete pathways) data.

The table below summarises figures by month. Reporting of waits over 78 weeks began in August 2022.

Waiting times: devolved nations

The figures below display national figures for paediatric patients ongoing waits in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Data were gathered from the Department of Health for Northern Ireland, Public Health Scotland, and Digital Health and Social Care Wales. As figures come from different datasets, the cohorts of weeks waited differ between each nation.

Northern Ireland

The figures below show number of patients and proportion of weeks waiting for paediatric outpatients.

The table below contains paediatric ongoing waits overall and by Health Board/Organisation.

Scotland

Figures below display ongoing waits for outpatient, inpatient and day cases in paediatrics.

The table below contains paediatric ongoing waits overall and by Health Board/Organisation.

Wales

Figures below show the number of patient pathways waiting to start treatment for the paediatric specialty.

The table below contains paediatric ongoing waits overall and by Health Board/Organisation.

Organisations

These maps show NHS Trust or Health Board organisations in the UK, and Community Trusts in England, and level 3 paediatric intensive care units (PICUs)5 . Note that some organisations have more than one site.

Some of the latest changes include:

  • the acquisition of Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust by Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, effective from 1 April 2022 with new organisation name Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
  • South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust was renamed as South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust, effective from 22 September 2022.
  • Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (RH5) has acquired Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (RA4), effective from April 1st 2023.
  • Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust (RXF) changed its name to Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust (RXF) effective from 12th May 2023.

With the introduction of Integrated Care Boards, some changes have taken place, such as name changes for both ICBs and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) - now referred as Sub ICB Locations.

The changes also impacted sx CCG boundaries and four NHSE/I regional boundaries, effectively resulting in the NHSE/I Midlands region becoming bigger and the East of England, North West, and North East and Yorkshire becoming smaller6 .

If you hover or tap on a map point, you can see the name of the organisation and the parent Integrated Care Board. When an organisation has more than one site, the main hospital sites have been included and will display in these 'tooltips'. See maps in new browser tab

Evidence library

A vast quantity of data related to workforce and healthcare is publicly available.

Below is a list (which will be kept up to date and expanded accordingly) of official resources with brief description of main type of information/variables and link to main page.

NHS Workforce statistics

Monthly numbers of NHS Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) staff working in NHS Trusts and CCGs in England (excluding primary care staff). Data are available for all months from 30 September 2009.

Go to NHS Workforce Statistics

NHS Workforce Statistics - variables/info

Monthly releases

  • Doctors by grade and specialty
  • Staff group, care setting and level

Quarterly releases

  • Turnover
  • Reasons for leaving
  • Equality and diversity
  • Mental health workforce
  • Staff in post

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database

This is a database containing details of all admissions, A&E attendances and outpatient appointments in NHS hospitals in England.

Go to HES database

HES database - variables/info

It covers all commissioning bodies in England

  • Private patients treated in NHS hospitals
  • Care delivered by treatment centres
  • Clinical information about diagnoses and operations
  • Patient age group, gender and ethnicity
  • Methods of admission and discharge
  • Geographical information

Hospital Admitted Patient Care Activity

The data are taken from the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES). HES contains records of all admissions, appointments and attendances for patients at NHS hospitals in England. The HES data used in this publication are called Finished Consultant Episodes, and each episode relates to a period of care for a patient under a single consultant at a single hospital. This publication occurs annually and cover a financial year.

Go to Hospital Admitted Patient Care Activity main page

Hospital admitted patient care activity - variables/info

Hospital admitted patient care activity series main data:

  • By CCG of responsibility
  • Diagnosis
  • Ethnic category
  • External causes
  • Hospital providers
  • Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)
  • Main specialty
  • Procedures and interventions
  • Treatment specialty
  • Time series
  • Provider-level analysis
  • Adult critical care tables
  • Data quality paediatric critical care analysis
  • Surgery for Urogynaecological Prolapse and SUI

Hospital Accident and Emergency Activity

Yearly publications on Accident and Emergency (A&E) activity in English hospitals. A joint publication by NHS Digital and NHS England, the data sources for this publication are: the Emergency Care Dataset (ECDS), A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions Monthly Situation Reports (MSitAE), in addition to the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) dataset.

Go to the NHS Emergency admissions page

Hospital accident and emergency activity - variables/info
  • A&E attendances in NHS hospitals, minor injury units and walk-in centres
  • Patient demographics
  • Time spent in A&E
  • Distributions by time of arrival, day of the week, time spent in A&E
  • Waits for admissions and re-attendances
  • Comparisons between home nations of 4 and 12 hour waits
  • A&E attendances but Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)
  • A&E attendances by ethnicity

NHS Hospital Outpatient Activity

Focussing on secondary care, it features annual publications covering financial year information on outpatient activity in English hospitals. The data are taken from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) warehouse.

Go to NHS Hospital Outpatient Activity

NHS Hospital outpatient activity - variables/info

Number of appointments (not individual patients):

  • Patient age
  • Gender
  • Appointment attended or not
  • By provider
  • By main specialty
  • By main procedure and intervention
  • By Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)

NHS Maternity Statistics

Yearly publications (financial year) with relation to delivery and birth episodes, and the booking appointments for these.
Data are sourced from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS) and are both available to download on the relevant webpage.

Go to NHS Maternity statistics

NHS Maternity statistics - variables/info

Main information available includes:

  • Records on all admissions, appointments and attendances for patients in NHS hospitals in England
  • Delivery episodes (HES)
  • Stages of maternity service care pathway (MSDS)
  • By provider level
  • Breastfeeding
  • Neonatal critical care

Organisation Data Service (ODS)

It is responsible for publishing codes that identify organisations and individuals across health and social care. It features ODS Portal - an NHS Digital search facility for organisations details, and ODS DataPoint - a self-service data export tool.

Go to ODS main webpage, go to ODS Portal, go to ODS DataPoint

Organisation Data Service - variables/info

Data available includes:

  • Information on mergers between organisations, name changes, changes in geography settings
  • NHS and non-NHS organisational data
  • records of past changes - ie matching CCGs and ICBs
  • links to devolved nations information

NHS Sickness Absence Rates

These series contain absence rates due to sickness in NHS staff, with data tracing back to 2009.

Go to the NHS Sickness absence rates main page

NHS Sickness Absence rates - variables/info
  • Monthly sickness rates by organisation
  • Reasons for absence by staff group
  • COVID-19 related absence
  • Annual summary tables for financial year

Scotland data

Public Health Scotland publishes information via the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data platform (former ISD Scotland).

Go to Public Health Scotland and to the SHSCOD platform

Scotland data platform - variables/info

There are over 90 datasets available for downloading, including data on:

  • Annual inpatient and daycase activity
  • Annual outpatient activity
  • Annual hospital beds information
  • Monthly A&E activity and waiting times

Wales data

The data about health and healthcare in Wales is produced by several bodies. The Statistics Directorate, Welsh Health Survey, NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS), Public Health Wales, Welsh Cancer Surveillance and Intelligence Unit, and more. The main sources from where these data can be accessed are Public Health Wales, NHS Wales' Health in Wales resource pages, and Digital Health and Care Wales' Patient Episode Database for Wales (PEDW).

Go to Public Health Wales data, NHS Wales' Health in Wales, and the PEDW data online

Wales data - variables/info

Health in Wales gives access to published data either by the organisation or the type of data involved, for instance:

  • Patient Episode Database for Wales
    • In-patients
    • Day cases
    • Maternity patients
    • Regular attenders

Northern Ireland data

The Department of Health offers a broad spectrum of datasets via the Information and Analysis Directorate. Furthermore, as part of the Digital NI Initiative, the OpenDataNI portal was developed, containing dataset from across the public sector in Northern Ireland.

Go to DoH statistics and the OpenDataNI platform

Northern Ireland - variables/info

Examples of datasets available:

  • COVID-19 statistics
  • Health Survey Northern Ireland
  • Emergency care statistics
  • Hospital activity statistics
  • Hospital waiting times statistics
  • Mental health and learning disability statistics
  • Social care statistics – children’s services
  • Workforce statistics – staff numbers and staff vacancies
  • Organisational information

General Medical Council

The GMC register is a list of doctors in the UK. It can be downloaded via the GMC website for a fee. There are two types of access, standard download and republication download. In addition, the GMC has several data reports that can be consulted.

How to access the GMC register and the GMC data reports

GMC register - variables/info

Main information contained includes:

  • Type of registration a doctor holds their
  • Training information
  • Whether they hold a licence to practise
  • Registration date
  • Details about primary medical qualification

Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network

PICANet collects data from Level 3 (Paediatric Intensive Care) Units and has been commissioned by NHS England and Improvement to undertake a 2-year development project to expand its clinical audit to include data collection and reporting of children in discrete Level 2 PCC units (sometimes referred to as High Dependency Units).

Go to PICANet

PICANet - variables/info

Information available in latest report (2022)

  • Admissions for paediatric critical care by age and sex
  • Outcomes
  • Prevalence
  • Beds and length of stay
  • Children in adult ICU
  • Breakdown by Health Organisation

LG Inform

LG Inform is a benchmarking tool for local areas and is managed by the Local Government Association. It allows to access, compare and analyse data to assess performance locally, regionally and nationally in England.

Go to LG Inform

LG Inform - variables/info

Some examples of the data available include:

  • Life expectancy at birth
  • Rate of admissions caused by unintentional and deliberate injuries per 10,000 children
  • Infant mortality per 1000 live births
  • Percentage of children achieving a 'good level of development' at foundation stage

UK population data

Annual population estimates for England and Wales based on the latest Census findings.

Go to ONS

Population data - variables/info

Statistics and estimates for the UK population

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Geography information

Fingertips - public health data

Brings together a range of publicly available data, information, reports, tools and resources on child and maternal health into one easily accessible hub. It helps you find and use the information and evidence you need to improve decision making as part of your planning or commissioning process.

Go to Fingertips

Fingertips

Brings together a range of publicly available data, information, reports, tools and resources on child and maternal health into one easily accessible hub. Available reports:

  • Improving health outcomes for vulnerable children and young people
  • Mental health in pregnancy and infants
  • Teenage pregnancy and young parents
  • Speech, language and communication
  • Unintentional injuries in and around the home
  • Unintentional injuries on the roads