Workforce planning and design of delivery models need to ensure an adequate staffing resource and ongoing supply to ensure people, communities and population health care needs are met.
This requires employing: the right people, with the right skills, working in the right place, at the right time.
The Northern Ireland pre and post graduate education commissioning framework aims to support this by incorporating strategic planning to meet the transformation agenda.
At the 31st March 2025 there were 29,966 Nurses and Midwives on the NMC register in Northern Ireland.
Understanding the workforce learning and development needs is essential to support future service delivery models.
As the health and social care system reforms in response to evolving patient and population needs, technology and pharmaceutical advancements, the multi-professional workforce needs to develop knowledge and skills to work within existing and new models of care.
To ensure the availability of a workforce pipeline education and training must be targeted as part of strategic and operational short-term and long-term workforce planning. This process must facilitate a workforce with: the right skills to undertake the wide range of required roles, across all relevant services, that are available to work as part of the interprofessional team when needed.
This Framework provides resources such as the:
How health and social care is delivered will continuously change to meet population health care needs, it is critical that nursing and midwifery workforce planning leads the reform agenda to ensure right care at the right time by the right person in the right place. The following will support workforce planning.