Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the recommendations of the British Society for Echocardiography made in its report entitled The UK Echocardiography Workforce published in June 2023, whether his Department is taking steps to help ensure that the NHS retains a sufficient number of experienced echocardiographers to train new recruits.

NHS England has developed a new fast-track echocardiography training scheme, which has led to 150 additional echocardiographers with further support being available in 2023/24.

More generally, the NHS People Plan and the People Promise set out a comprehensive range of actions to improve staff retention. They provide a strong focus on creating a more modern, compassionate and inclusive culture in the National Health Service by strengthening health and wellbeing, equality and diversity, culture and leadership and flexible working.

NHS priorities and operational planning guidance 23/24 has asked systems to refresh their 2022/23 whole system workforce plans to improve staff retention through a systematic focus on all elements of the NHS People Promise.  Staff wellbeing should be strategically aligned with elective recovery plans, including workforce demand and capacity planning.  In addition, the NHS Retention Programme is continuously seeking to understand why staff leave, resulting in targeted interventions to support staff to stay whilst keeping them well.

The Long Term Workforce Plan builds on the People Plan and sets out how to improve culture and leadership to ensure that up to 130,000 fewer staff leave the NHS over the next 15 years. This includes: implementing actions from the NHS People Plan that have been shown to be successful; and implementing plans to improve flexible opportunities for prospective retirees and delivering the actions needed to modernise the NHS pension scheme.

These interventions apply across staff groups, including echocardiographers.