The nursing recruitment disaster might push an NHS already crippled by Tory cuts nearer to collapse, union chief Pat Cullen warned.
And except No10 urgently acts to reverse the rising disaster, affected person security can be additional in danger. UCAS information printed immediately reveals 31,100 folks utilized for UK nursing diploma programs for 2024, down from 33,570 final 12 months, 41,220 in 2022 and 46,040 in 2021.
Graduates usually find yourself tens of 1000’s of kilos of debt and face poor pay and circumstances on the wards. A mixture of NHS cuts, elevated workloads, exhaustion and a sense of being undervalued has already led to an exodus of UK-trained nurses from the NHS, leaving 42,000 vacancies in England alone.
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Decline
Labour laid the blame on the PM’s door. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting mentioned: “Rishi Sunak drove nurses out on strike for the first time in history. Now he’s driving nurses of the future away from the NHS all together.
“The Prime Minister has blamed nurses for his own failure to cut waiting lists. Is it any wonder young students don’t fancy life as a punchbag for government ministers?
The Royal College of Nursing has written to Health Secretary Victoria Atkins to highlight its “deep concern about the rapidly deteriorating state of nurse recruitment”.
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General Secretary Ms Cullen instructed her: “We believe the situation poses a direct threat to the sustainability of the NHS and patient safety.
“A decline in applicants risks causing a cascading effect, with fewer students accepted onto nursing courses leading to lower numbers graduating and becoming registered nurses. The Government must take immediate action to prevent further decline in nursing recruitment.”
The RCN is demanding tuition charges be scrapped for nursing levels and desires a pupil mortgage forgiveness scheme for these staying within the NHS. NHS Providers deputy chief govt Saffron Cordery warned the recruitment disaster threatens to scupper the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, which the Tories have solely dedicated to fund the primary 5 years of.
She added: “Without measures to ensure the NHS remains attractive to future and existing staff, it risks being just a pipedream.” A report by the Nuffield Trust final 12 months discovered UK-trained nurses have fallen virtually a 3rd in simply two years. Four in 10 at the moment are recruited from abroad.