Safe staffing: this is how many doctors we really need

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has developed the first recommendations for safe medical staffing levels in UK hospitals.1 It urges NHS trusts to measure their workforce against these “indicative” standards (see visual summary) to guard against shortages that pose risks to patients.

College registrar and president elect, Andrew Goddard, says there is “staggering” variation in the numbers of doctors per bed in the UK but no clear tally of how many doctors, nurses, or other healthcare professionals are needed in the acute medical setting at any point in time.

“Everybody’s been afraid to measure it, because they haven’t known what to compare it to. This is the first time that anybody’s actually put a standard down to say, ‘This is what we think we should have—let’s now measure against it to see what we do have,’” he says.