Overview

Careers in the NHS

The NHS (National Health Service) is the 5^th largest employer in the world. 

Not bad, considering we’re a tiny island.

If you really want to know the four who are bigger employers, it’s McDonalds (no surprise there) Walmart, the US Department of Defence and China’s People’s Liberation Army.

Now you’ve won the quiz, let’s talk about the NHS…

The NHS employs around 1.4 million people, with a staffing budget of nearly £60bn, and there are over 350 different job roles and careers across this hugely diverse and progressive modern business. 

In the Liverpool City Region we are fortunate to have many hospitals and medical facilities with different specialisms, including the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, the Linda McCartney Centre at the Women’s Hospital, the Dental Hospital, St Paul’s Eye Hospital, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the Walton Centre, and many more, as well as 233 GP surgeries, and 6 Clinical Care Groups, each running hospital trusts, walk-in centres, specialist units and much more.

Our universities also work closely with the NHS to provide a partnership which supports digital innovation, cutting edge technology and techniques, and a world class reputation, and we also have many pharmaceutical companies in our region such as Smithkline-Glaxo, AstraZeneca, Allergan, Bristol Myers Squibb, and many more who lead the world in innovation and proved this with the development of the Covid vaccine..

Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LUHFT) has confirmed the opening of the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital in September 2022, with 646 beds, the hospital will have access to the latest technology and patient care services, and will create many job opportunities in lots of different roles.

Nationally, the average annual earnings per person working in the NHS were £35,574 in 2021, and everybody who works in the NHS has the option of a career with a structure, progression pathways and extensive internal training and development opportunities, with good pension options, conditions of service, paid leave, and many posts offering flexible hours.

Entry routes are well established, with the option to start your career straight from school, through an apprenticeship, directly from college or university, or from another career path. 

When we think of NHS careers, it’s tempting to think immediately of the front line staff we associate with hospitals and doctors surgeries, the nurses, healthcare assistants, doctors, consultants, surgeons, anaesthetists, and other people in similar roles, but there are a great many other roles we don’t necessarily see.

These include cleaners, researchers, HR teams, ICT technicians, project managers, administrators, scientists, and many other roles which offer diverse, interesting and well paid jobs outside the medical field itself but still an essential part of the service.

The over-85s population has increased by almost 33% since 2005 and is expected to double in the next 20 years, creating more demand for healthcare as people live longer, which in turn is a result of better medical care, and in addition demand will increase due to the increasing range of options now available – heart transplants, knee transplants, keyhole surgery, and chemotherapy have all been routinely available less than 30 years. 

As science advances, so the range of both medical and non-medical roles grows to accommodate new technology and new and innovative ways of working, making cutting-edge jobs always available across the sector – but you may need cutting-edge skills to compete for them. 

Perhaps the one thing which distinguishes making this a really interesting and challenging area of work with lots of scope to succeed and gain real satisfaction from helping others and improving their health and lives. 

Many people working in the NHS enjoy the variety, and the fact that no two days are the same – and if you look at what the NHS does on an average day, you can see why!

On an average day in the NHS…

• More than 1 million people would attend a GP appointment
• More than 250,000 people would attend an outpatient appointment
• More than 30,000 people would call 999

Adult Social Care

Adult social care covers lots of different jobs, but all involve providing some level of care for other people.

This can be one of the most rewarding jobs, because the care you provide will make a huge difference to the lives of other people, in fact in many cases your care will be fundamental to their quality of life, or for some people, life itself.

There are many people in our society who need some help, sometimes because they’re elderly, or injured, or recovering from an operation or trauma. Other people might have dementia, or learning difficulties, but the one thing in common is that all these people need some level of support in their everyday lives.

Your care can support people to maintain their independence, health, dignity and control, allowing them in many cases to live where they’re most comfortable while still getting the support they need to live their lives as fully as possible.

Some care roles are based in residential accommodation such as care homes and nursing homes, while others will involve travelling to the homes of the client to assist them with tasks such as cooking, caring for themselves, and managing daily tasks.

Some workers in this sector can be based in doctors’ surgeries, community hubs, and dentists, as well as childcare facilities, so there is a huge diversity of different roles available.

This sector also supports the other sectors in the Liverpool City Region, because without social care support many people would be unable to work due to caring responsibilities for older people, people with long term sickness, or children, so  this sector is also seen as a facilitator for other sectors and has an important part to play in our overall economy.

Social care is, generally speaking, a relatively easy sector to enter, with many employers using value-based recruitment rather than insisting on experience or qualifications, so there are excellent opportunities for training and progression, either within the social care sector or as a stepping stone to other careers.

The sector is split into 3 main categories – 

• Human health activities: These are primarily aimed at supporting people short term through sickness or illness
• Residential care activities: This comprises the provision of care in residential settings such as care and nursing homes, often for long term conditions.
• Social work activities without accommodation: This involves a range of social assistance services provided to clients in their own homes and child day care activities.

In the Liverpool City Region, Social Care is a huge sector for employment -in fact 19% of total employment involves some elements of social care, that’s about 1 in 5 of the working population, slightly more in Sefton where it is 22% of the population.

Across our Region, there are an estimated 50,400 jobs in adult social care, around 38,300 of these jobs were care workers and 2,250 professionals in areas such as social work and nursing, and we have 658 residential and non-residential homes. 

Over the last decade, employment in the sector has grown steadily in this sector above the level of overall employment growth. 

A number of sub-sectors have shown exceptionally strong employment growth: dental practice activities (87% growth in the Liverpool City Region), general medical practice activities (86% growth in the Liverpool City Region) and child day care activities (41% growth in the Liverpool City Region).

The use of “smart” data is set to make considerable changes in the Adult Social Care setting, as the rollout of 5G across our Region links into advances in technology, to make more systems available for monitoring and supporting vulnerable people through the use of smart phones, intelligent sensors and AI systems, and as the technology advances there are more and more opportunities – not to replace human interaction, but to enhance it.

The availability of staff and management training in the Health and Social Work sector is high and in 2015, 78 per cent of staff received some form of training in the previous 12 months. Health and Social Work employers were the most likely across the sectors to have trained any staff to a qualification (65 per cent) and the rise of apprenticeships has provided even more opportunities.

In 2019 research suggested that 6.4% of care worker roles in the Liverpool City Region were vacant. Across the sector, this equates to an estimated 3,250 vacant roles. This vacancy rate was above the North West average (5.4%) but just below the national average (6.6%).

Since Covid, this has improved but the sector is always looking for people with the right skills and dedication and can offer a wide range of job opportunities and the chance to start a successful career.

Assuming that the adult social care workforce grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population then the number of adult social care jobs is projected to increase by 31% (500,000 jobs) to around 2 million jobs across the UK by 2030

Many employers are less concerned about your qualifications and experience than about your passion and attitude, so if you think a career in Adult Social care might be for you there are lots of additional resources available on the site.

Life Sciences – what does this involve?

“Life Sciences”, sometimes called “Bioscience” is a very broad term which includes all those scientific areas which help us understand and manage the biological aspects of our existence. 

If that sounds complicated, think of it like this – even from the very earliest humans, as a society we’ve been looking to our environment to heal wounds or cure diseases, manage pain and improve our quality of life. 

Throughout human history our knowledge and understanding has increased, and our technology improved so that today the medical profession can provide drugs and techniques which even our grandparents couldn’t have imagined, but the search for better drugs, better procedures, and better technology carries on.

For example, the development of vaccines to reduce the impact of Covid-19 has brought this sector into the limelight recently, but in fact research is constantly happening to advance areas such as medicines, veterinary science, dentistry, genetics, food production, environmental impact reduction immunology and illness and disease management, as well as surgical procedures and technological advances such as robot and micro surgery.

It’s an exciting and constantly changing area, which has the potential to improve the lives of many other people.

 Although they may not always make the headlines, small but significant advances are being made all the time in this sector, which gets ever more important as we develop new techniques, but occasionally new and exciting techniques such as gene therapy come along and change the game completely.

Essentially, working in this sector is working at the junction of biology and technology – using new techniques to improve things in our society, and as technology changes constantly, working this sector is always exciting and innovative, and full of new opportunities.

If this sounds a little vague don’t be surprised – the list of “sciences” alone is HUGE, and so is the range of interesting, varied and well-paid career opportunities.

Whether you’re treating patients or working in a laboratory conducting research, working in the health and life sciences sector means you’ll be making a real difference to the lives of others. 

The essential roles of doctors, nurses, surgeons, veterinarians, and pharmacists all depend on the scientists working in the background developing new drugs or techniques, and while they may not always be as visible as front-line staff their role is no less important.

In the Liverpool City Region approximately 110,000 people work in this fast-moving sector, in companies such as AstraZeneca; Allergan; Baxter Healthcare, Bristol Myers Squibb; Lilly; Nestlé Health Science; Seqirus and Unilever, where improved production facilities at these companies have created a vibrant, efficient and competitive environment to create and mass produce new drugs and vaccines.

Our Region is home to more specialist hospitals and health centres than any other UK City Region outside London. As the demand on the NHS and private medical services at home and abroad grows in years to come as our society ages and people live longer, more pharmaceutical solutions will be necessary and more diverse jobs will be created.

Since Health and Life Science workers are in such high demand, many employers offer extra training and personal development opportunities to help staff progress and build their careers, giving you a great chance to branch out and expand your knowledge and experience while you work.

It’s also a relatively well-paid career path, and although the entry qualifications for scientists and researchers are high, the starting salaries are also higher than average and can rise to offer some excellent financial prospects.

So if you have an interest in biology, technology, or any related subjects and are looking for a well-paid and satisfying career path, the Life Science sector is definitely worth exploring!

If you check out the other pages on this site you’ll see there are a HUGE number of career choices available in bioscience, covering every part of the scientific spectrum, from vets to virologists, from animal behaviourist to zoologist and everything in between.

Quick Facts

NHS

• The NHS deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours.
• With around 1.2 million employees, the NHS is the largest employer in the UK, and the fifth largest employer in the world. (behind McDonalds, Walmart, the US Department of Defence and China’s People’s Liberation Army).
• The average annual earnings per person working in the NHS were £35,574 in 2021.
• There are more than 350 different career options in the NHS.
• The Commonwealth Fund ranks the NHS as the world’s best healthcare system.
• The wage bill for the NHS makes up a substantial proportion of its budget. In 2019/20, the total cost of NHS staff was £56.1 billion.
• Pre-pandemic, GPs were conducting around 3 million telephone appointments a month, but during the pandemic it is estimated that number peaked at 11 million -and this practice has proved so popular it is likely to remain post-Covid.
• The NHS workforce is growing, but not rapidly enough to keep up with demand, meaning urgent action is required to ensure the NHS has enough staff in place to deliver high-quality care for patients, as well as developing the service for the future. 
• The Conservative party manifesto pledged 50,000 more nurses to be working in the NHS by 2024/25.
• In 2019 the UK spent 10.2 per cent of GDP on health, which is in line with the average among comparable countries. The estimate for 2020 is that this has risen to 12.8 per cent due to the increased funding allocated to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic.
• In a typical week, 1.4 million people will receive help in their home from the NHS.
• The over-85s population has increased by almost 33% since 2005 and is expected to double in the next 20 years, creating more demand for healthcare.

Adult Social Care

• The number of adult social care jobs in England as at 2020/21 was estimated at 1.67 million – this has increased by around 2.7% (45,000 jobs) between 2019/20 and 2020/21.
• It is estimated that the Liverpool City Region has 14,500 adult social care jobs employed in the local authority and independent sectors. These included 1,100 managerial roles, 650 regulated professionals, 11,000 direct care (including 9,200 care workers), and 1,800 other-non-care proving role.
• Regionally, around two thirds (62%) of the workforce usually work full-time hours and 38% are part-time.
• The adult care workforce in the Liverpool City Region is 75% female, with an average age of 45, and 4,200 people will be eligible to retire within the next 10 years – that’s nearly a quarter of the workforce.
• An estimated 17,700 organisations were involved in providing or organising adult social care in England as at 2020/21. Those services were delivered in an estimated 39,000 establishments.
• 48% of the direct care providing workforce in the Liverpool City Region hold a relevant adult social care qualification, this is higher than the national average.
• Since 2012/13, care worker pay has increased by 11.8 % in real terms.
• In 2019/20, the total expenditure on adult social care by local authorities was £23.3 billion, up more than £1 billion from the previous year.
• Forecasts show that if the adult social care workforce grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population between 2020 and 2035, an increase of 24% (56,000 extra jobs) would be required by 2035.
• Many workers are extremely loyal to this sector – workers in the Liverpool City Region have on average 10.4 years of experience and 86% of the workforce had been working in the sector for at least three years.

Life Sciences

• The UK produces nearly a third of all European scientific journal publications.
• The global market for products and services in Life Sciences is estimated at £15 billion.
• Approx 78, 000 people work in the sector in the UK, and over 6,000 in the Liverpool City Region.
• The average Scientist/ Biotech salary in Liverpool, UK is £42,952 as of March 12, 2021, but the range typically falls between £34,522 and £51,633.
• Liverpool Life Sciences UTC is the only school in the United Kingdom that has its own student-run Institute.
• The Liverpool City Region is part of the Liverpool-Manchester life sciences corridor, which is one of the UK’s top three clusters of biomedical activity.
• The UK life science industry is the largest in Europe – in global terms, it’s second only to the United States.
• The Life Sciences sector is inseparable from other sectors such as digital and advanced manufacturing.
• Life sciences delivers almost 10% of the UK economic output – over £1.5bn every year.
• Liverpool City Region boasts three universities, the world-renowned Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and nine hospital trusts, and the highest number of specialist hospitals outside London.
• Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine played a big role in the development of the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine to help beat the Covid pandemic.

Helpful Links

NHS

Adult Social Care

Life Sciences