General practitioner workforce planning: assessment of four policy directions

Table 1 Parameters included in the workforce model

Parameter	Data
Existing workforce¹	Age-sex distribution of current workforce
Vocational training graduates²	Count (160 per annum)⁴, proportion male (mean 0.3 and standard deviation 0.05), age (mean 32.2 and standard deviation 2.4)
Migrants¹	Count (15 per annum), proportion male (mean 0.75 and standard deviation 0.05), age (mean 34.9 and standard deviation 2.3)
Foreign recruits	Count⁵, proportion male (mean 0.9 and standard deviation 0.02), age (mean 36.8 and standard deviation 2.4)
Nurse substitutes	Count⁶, proportion male (mean 0.1 and standard deviation 0.02), age (mean 35.0 and standard deviation 2.4)
Sessions¹	Sessions delivered by age and sex (overall mean 8.6 and standard deviation 2.5)
Drop-out²	Proportion drop-outs applied to graduate entrants (mean 0.1 and standard deviation 0.02)
Retirement¹	Intended retirement age by age and sex (overall mean 63.2 and standard deviation 4.9)
Mortality³	Probability of death by age for higher professionals (ranging from 0.0006 at age 28 to 0.12 at age 80)

1. Survey of GPs [8]
2. Survey of GP training graduates [9]
3. Central Statistics Office mortality data [13]
4. Intake is 183 per annum from 2011 for intervention with increased training places.
5. There are 10 and 20 foreign recruits per annum for relevant interventions, otherwise zero.
6. There are 50 nurse substitutes per annum for relevant interventions, otherwise zero.
Note: data sampled from survey results, means and standard deviations shown for information

ISSN: 1472-6963