Both the review of elements of the NHS Agenda for Change pay system, agreed as part of the pay offer accepted earlier this year, and the Ministerial Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce, secured as a direct result of the RCN’s campaigning on safe staffing and fair pay for nursing, are now underway.
The significance of the review and taskforce can’t really be overstated. We all need to see positive action come out of this work. It’s vital not only in supporting you and nursing staff like you to develop in your career and provide the quality of care you want to, but also to building a sustainable nursing workforce that meets the needs of the population in the future.
The recruitment crisis in nursing is not improving. The vacancy rates have remained stubbornly high for a couple of years, but we’re also now seeing an extremely concerning drop off in the number of people applying for undergraduate nursing courses. The latest UCAS data, published earlier this month, showed a 19% drop in applicants to nursing programmes in Scotland in the last year. That’s following a 12% drop reported at the same time last year, and a fall of 8% compared to the previous year in the number of acceptances onto nursing courses reported by UCAS in Autumn 2022.
These trends are a serious threat to the continued supply of new nurses to ensure a sustainable workforce. Fewer people into courses means fewer out at the other end, a very unhealthy state of affairs when you factor in the statistic that roughly a quarter of nursing students in Scotland do not complete their course.
That statistic could be worsening, too. In Nursing student finance: the true cost of becoming a nurse, the report of a recent RCN Scotland survey, 66% of nursing students who responded said they had considered leaving their course due to financial pressures and 58% said it was having a high or very high impact on their academic performance. The detailed picture our report paints, of nursing students racking up debts and struggling with their physical and mental wellbeing, is very distressing.
So, clearly there’s a lot at stake this summer. Scotland can ill afford even more gaps to appear in the nursing workforce. Speed of action is important too. Current and prospective nursing students need to know that financial support is going to improve and improve very soon. Equally, with increasing numbers of nurses leaving the profession, current nursing staff need to know that more will be done to retain them in the workforce. The review and taskforce must deliver for the nursing workforce sooner than later.
The significance of the review and taskforce can’t really be overstated. We all need to see positive action come out of this work. It’s vital not only in supporting you and nursing staff like you to develop in your career and provide the quality of care you want to, but also to building a sustainable nursing workforce that meets the needs of the population in the future.
The recruitment crisis in nursing is not improving. The vacancy rates have remained stubbornly high for a couple of years, but we’re also now seeing an extremely concerning drop off in the number of people applying for undergraduate nursing courses. The latest UCAS data, published earlier this month, showed a 19% drop in applicants to nursing programmes in Scotland in the last year. That’s following a 12% drop reported at the same time last year, and a fall of 8% compared to the previous year in the number of acceptances onto nursing courses reported by UCAS in Autumn 2022.
These trends are a serious threat to the continued supply of new nurses to ensure a sustainable workforce. Fewer people into courses means fewer out at the other end, a very unhealthy state of affairs when you factor in the statistic that roughly a quarter of nursing students in Scotland do not complete their course.
That statistic could be worsening, too. In Nursing student finance: the true cost of becoming a nurse, the report of a recent RCN Scotland survey, 66% of nursing students who responded said they had considered leaving their course due to financial pressures and 58% said it was having a high or very high impact on their academic performance. The detailed picture our report paints, of nursing students racking up debts and struggling with their physical and mental wellbeing, is very distressing.
So, clearly there’s a lot at stake this summer. Scotland can ill afford even more gaps to appear in the nursing workforce. Speed of action is important too. Current and prospective nursing students need to know that financial support is going to improve and improve very soon. Equally, with increasing numbers of nurses leaving the profession, current nursing staff need to know that more will be done to retain them in the workforce. The review and taskforce must deliver for the nursing workforce sooner than later.
