Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many vacancies are there in the NHS for (a) ophthalmic clinicians and (b) ophthalmic nurse specialists in each NHS hospital.

NHS Improvement collects vacancy data for three staff groups; doctors, nurses and ‘other staff’. These vacancy statistics are published for England and at the regional level of North, Midlands and East, London and South.

It does not specifically produce vacancy data for ophthalmic clinicians or ophthalmic nurse specialists or any vacancy data for each National Health Service hospital.

NHS Digital published the latest NHS Improvement vacancy data which can be found in the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-vacancies-survey/february-2015---march-2019-provisional-experimental-statistics