The NHS is addressing workforce shortages through various measures, including long-term workforce planning, increasing training and education, improving recruitment, and retaining more staff. The government has published a long-term workforce plan aimed at training thousands more doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers to fill the current vacancies in the NHS and provide staff for the future. The plan seeks to significantly reduce England's reliance on international recruitment and aims to grow the NHS workforce from 1.4 million full-time equivalent staff to an average annual increase of around 3.5% a year over the next 15 years.

Additionally, the plan includes proposals to double medical school places, roll out apprenticeships, and train more undergraduate nurses every year. The government is also driving forward progress to recruit more staff into the NHS, with commitments to recruit 50,000 more nurses and deliver additional primary care staff.

However, there are criticisms of the plan, and concerns about the use of temporary staff, increasing reliance on overseas workers, and the need for comprehensive, long-term measures to recruit and retain domestically trained staff.

The workforce shortages in the NHS are a result of various factors, including low pay, work-related stress, reduced job satisfaction, and government policies that have led to a significant shortfall in the number of nursing staff.

The challenges facing the NHS in addressing workforce shortages also include political changes, an ageing population, health inequality, the growth of digital technology, and communication breakdown.