The three workforce censuses are collected annually on 30 September for England. They cover:
General and personal medical services—records numbers and details of general practitioners (GPs) (contracted to the national health service) along with information on their practices, staff, patients and the services they provide. The figures exclude GP locums.
Medical and dental workforce census—qualified doctors and dentists in England (excluding GPs and high street dentists) employed by the NHS in hospital and community services. The census records details of staff (e.g. location, sex, age, ethnicity, country of primary medical qualification) and the area they work in (grade and specialty).
The data relate to staff holding permanent paid and/or honorary appointments that involve a degree of clinical work in the NHS hospital services and community health services. Numbers of staff holding either directly employed locum appointments or agency locum appointments are not collected in the census.
Non-medical workforce census—non-medical staff, i.e. excluding medical or dental doctors, employed by the NHS in hospital and community services.
The census records details of staff (e.g. location, age, sex, ethnicity) along with their occupation code which identifies:
each member of staff’s main functional group (e.g. ambulance; nursing etc.);
the level of qualification (e.g. within nursing—midwifery; health visiting staff etc.); and
their area of work (e.g. acute, elderly and general; paediatric; school nursing).