4 days ago
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There are 21% less nursing students starting courses astatine universities crossed the UK than 3 years ago.
Universities and Colleges Admissions Service figures amusement 23,800 students person been accepted connected to nursing courses for this world twelvemonth – 340 less than past twelvemonth and 6,350 less than successful 2021.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has called the concern “critical” and “as atrocious arsenic it's ever been”.
Across each subjects, determination has been a 0.9% emergence successful the fig of students going to assemblage this twelvemonth compared with 2023 - the archetypal summation successful 4 years.
But nursing courses person seen a 1.4% driblet implicit the past 12 months.
The 21% UK driblet breaks down by nation:
- 22% successful Wales
- 21.6% successful England
- 19.8% successful Scotland
- 10.3% successful Northern Ireland
There was a surge successful nursing students successful 2020 and 2021 but the figures person present fallen to pre-pandemic levels.
"The pandemic had an impact," RCN England enforcement manager Patricia Marquis said, "positively successful the archetypal stages and present negatively arsenic we determination distant from the pandemic."
And the figures would "really interaction the full of society" for years to come.
Speaking to the Covid enquiry this week, England’s erstwhile main caregiver Dame Ruth May criticised a “catastrophic decision” , successful 2015, to regenerate the assistance oregon bursary paid to pupil midwives and nurses with loans.
It had led to simplification of astir 5,700 trainees successful England by 2020, Dame Ruth said, which “would person made a difference” successful the pandemic.
“There would person been little burnout - determination would person been little intelligence impact,” she said.
The RCN has called connected the authorities to supply amended fiscal backing for pupil nurses.
It besides wants recently qualified nurses' starting salaries boosted from £30,000 to £35,000.
An Department of Health and Social Care authoritative covering England said the NHS had “faced chronic workforce shortages for years" but would bid “record numbers of nurses”.
A Welsh authorities authoritative said it "needs to see if the existent fiscal bundle remains attractive" but NHS bursaries and afloat attraction enactment were disposable to eligible healthcare students.
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