Workforce development is key to the full implementation the government’s End of Life Care Strategy. This means both training the wider health and social care workforce in end of life care and in ensuring that there are sufficient numbers of trained people available to work in specialist services.

NCPC has been conducting surveys to form a picture of the current make up of the specialist palliative care workforce. This includes data about palliative medicine consultants and SpRs, nurses and Allied Health Professionals. We have run surveys in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, enabling us to identify national trends and priorities for workforce development.

The survey provides the only comprehensive overview of the specialist palliative care workforce covering both the NHS and voluntary sector. It is therefore a valuable resource for commissioners and providers to identify gaps and priorities for their local workforce planning and development.

The surveys are conducted in partnership with the NHS Information Centre and the Centre for Workforce Intelligence (formally known as the Workforce Review Team, now a part of Mouchel).

We would like to thank all the specialist palliative care providers and cancer networks for completing these surveys.

Getting copies of the results

You can download the national and regional findings by clicking on the links below:

2010 Survey

2009 Survey

2008 Survey

2007 Survey

2005 Survey

Longitudinal Survey

This report identifies some of the key findings from the 2010 collection results and then highlights some of the trends over the years the survey has been running (2005-10). The report has been produced by Mouchel plc.

Download the Longitudinal Survey (opens in new window)