An extra 15 million has also been earmarked for 50 new NHS nurseries in a bid to help doctors, nurses and other staff who have families. No new hospital development will be approved unless it makes provision for a staff nursery. Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that an extra 1bn would be pumped into the NHS over the next three years. A total of 168m of that money will be used to fund recruitment and retention initiatives. The initiatives I am announcing today will mean we can make an extra effort to recruit and retain the NHS doctors and nurses we need, as well as encouraging those who have left to return.
Ministers are very concerned at the growing shortage of GPs in deprived areas.
The situation is likely to be made considerably worse by the imminent retirement of many doctors from the Asian sub-continent, who were recruited to solve a similar staffing crisis in the 1960s. The government wants to recruit an extra 2,000 GPs by 2004. But the British Medical Association has warned that without an increase of 10,000 in GP numbers there is no way the ambitious targets laid out in last year's NHS Plan will be achieved. The plan set out proposals to guarantee all patients access to a family doctor within 48 hours. Low morale Morale among GPs is said to be dangerously low, with many set on early retirement.