As the FT has reported this morning:
The number of applications to nursing courses at UK universities has fallen sharply, prompting the Royal College of Nursing to call for emergency measures to boost recruitment and address NHS staff shortages.
Apparently, university applications for nursing courses are down 7.4 per cent compared to last year.
This blows a massive hole in the government's stated plan to recruit more nurses.
It also gives rise to the question ‘why might this be happening?'
Could it be that that treating nurses with contempt and refusing their reasonable pay demands, so forcing them to strike, might have had anything to do with this?
Ministers would deny this, of course.
Anyone with the slightest common sense might express amazement that applications are as high as they are given the shoddy way in which all NHS staff have been treated by this government.
Ministers who think they can score points over state employees without repercussions arising really are very stupid.
And no one believes Wes Streeting will be any better.
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No brainer, quite right – but then, it’s there job to be wilfully obtuse
The whole country feels obtuse! Can’t get sensible answers from anyone bar a few!
………….and the Guardian I recall reported on the number of ‘nurses’ with false qualifications in the NHS yesterday?
I wonder when the penny – or maybe a higher denomination – will drop with our sick society that just wants everything doing as cheaply as possible?
Again, I refer to the building trade – not only have we seen new properties being handed over having been approved for Council of Mortgage Lenders and National House Building Certification without being connected to the drainage but we see electrical installations having been certified without basic things like residual mains devices being fitted!!!
This country cheaps assets cheaply then wants to exploit them – including its people.
It just does not add up. We need a new way.
The solution is both obvious and simple: “you bodge it, you fix
it”. After a few rounds of that builders either start doing things
properly first time, or go out of business.
(I realise this has never been done anywhere, and will never be
implemented in the UK, but I’m allowed to dream of a better future )
We have fallen back to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists mentality.
Just to point out that the Scottish Government have a bursary in place for nurses, £10,000 p.a for the first three years, and then 75% of that for the fourth year. In addition, there are other allowances available depending on individual circumstances.
Thank you, PSR.
It’s not as if nurses from overseas are treated equally. Since the pandemic eased, it has not gone away, nurses coming from overseas are paid less and have to pay for their own accommodation. If it was not for the prevalence of English, many would go to the EU where there are similar problems and demand.
If you come across the talking heads that are all over the MSM, like I often do due to regulatory and trade policy work, they hold these professions in contempt. It’s not a surprise that the politicians get away with it.
Richard is right to highlight that Streeting, who appears to the model for many, if not most, wannabe Labour MPs. Not just wanting to gut healthcare with private sector involvement, including, it was implied, the use of vouchers for academy style healthcare providers*, Streeting would like the British government to export his ideas to developing countries. Streeting is not just ignorant, he’s uninterested, too, and content to be a sock puppet for Mandelson, his mentor and more, and Blair and, going back to his student days, zionists*. *Some overlap, mainly US.
George Osborne’s decision in 2017 to stop nursing bursaries and instead make them apply for student loans may also have a bearing. They are expected to work on the wards for part of their training too, which makes it tricky to work for an income.
Growing up in the 1960s and 70s becoming a nurse was regarded as a high status job amongst working class women.
So it came as a surprise post 2008 that when talking to 17, 18. 19 year olds about possible future education and careers, that Nursing or becoming a para-medic seemed to be universally unappealing.
No amount of explaining that it was no longer just about bed pans, or that it offered possible career progression or, at that time, decent pay appeared to make any difference. Minds were already made up.
I never got to the bottom of it.
Because these days it’s about what you consume – not about what you do to be able to consume.
We simply undervalue work.
“As the FT has reported this morning:
The number of applications to nursing courses at UK universities has fallen sharply, prompting the Royal College of Nursing to call for emergency measures to boost recruitment and address NHS staff shortages…”
The graph, in the link, indicates the fall in applications for both England and the UK and they look very similar; the sources for the text appear to be England specific. I don’t know if its lazy journalism (using Britain, England and the UK as synonyms is all to common from London based media), or a deliberate attempt to mask how acute the problem in England, or even to downplay the situation elsewhere:
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/02/15/scottish-student-nursing-applications-at-twice-the-level-of-england-due-to-snp-government-initiatives/
In Scotland, free tuition plus bursary fof nursing, currently £10,000 per year plus possible additional benefits depending on individual circumstances. Number last year 4,650 in England 24,650. Still not enough in Scotland, but fairing much better with the positive support of Scottish government.
Anecdote: my daughter was a senior nurse in a major hospital premature baby ICU. Sick to the bone after 13 years of double shifts (agency or barrier nursing unqualified staff being provided for the handover), she decided to retrain as a nurse practitioner and Health Visitor (where there also is a massive shortage). She took a BIG cut in salary to trainand chewed up any savings as well as the profit from selling her house to move to a cheaper house (in Lee Anderson’s constituency) while looking after a baby and doing the professional course – at the same time coping with gestational diabetes. Once qualified she should have a protected caseload – she actually got a DOUBLE one with lots of ‘social services interested’ cases.
We wonder why we have shortages………
It is interesting that despite the tories worshipping the market they never considering it for labour.
I suggest that they pay nurses more, as the market requires, if there is a shortage
You make a very good point. It has got beyond restoring funding to the NHS. People work in a public service for multiple reasons, but as well as being reasonably (but no generously) paid they respond to appreciation for what they do and the sense that they can meet their professional requirements without being too over-stretched.
It will take not only resolving (reasonable) wage disputes but also solving staffing shortfalls and stopping insulting remarks from politicians before recruitment is restored.
While that could in a perfect world be addressed for nurses, given a large pool of qualified nurses who currently choose not to work, it will take a lot longer to restore the shortfall in doctors, and that is without considering all the other professions involved.
I wonder also how much the culture of management by bullying in some NHS Acute Trusts lies at the problem of recruitment and retention?
The position is similar for teacher recruitment, particularly at secondary level.https://schoolsweek.co.uk/just-half-of-secondary-teacher-recruitment-target-met/
As someone with an Occupational Therapist as a close relative I get first-hand reports of what is occurring at the ‘coal face’. Despite regular advertising of posts the local health authority cannot fill vacant posts for either Occupational Therapists or Physiotherapists. Q.E.D.
https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/nursing-associates/workforce-planning-deployment-nursing-associates
Because becoming a nursing associate does not leave you owing £30000 before you start working? You are earning on the job, as an apprentice, in the same way that previously there were SENs.
https://www.themedicportal.com/blog/ucas-application-stats-for-2024-entry-medicine/
Medical school applications are on a downward trend too.
The government is telling people to use chemists more for simple health problems at the same time that chemists are closing down. Where’s the sense in that?
https://northeastbylines.co.uk/tyneside-mp-blasts-boots-decision-to-close-its-doors-as-kenton-residents-are-left-with-no-chemist/
Boots UK, owned mainly by Walgreens, including Blackrock.
I would not trust a chemist….
You don’t have to, your wife is a retired GP.
After I came out of hospital after having covid I was on a blood thinner because of blood clots in my lungs. A couple of months later I had a scan to discover my lungs were clear and I could come off the medication. The lung specialist wrote to my GP and the aorta specialist at a different hospital. My GP said he would not take me off it until he had letters from both specialists. The letters he had said I could come off it provided the other specialist agreed, but they were not acceptable to my GP.
I took all the letters to the local chemist who read through them all and said she was taking me off it. That took another three months.
The aorta specialist said that if I’d had another dissection while on it I would have bled to death before getting to the hospital.
There are times when you have to trust a chemist.
I wouldn’t
They have no training in complexity
And not even, necessarily, in co-morbidities where risk is an inherent part of treatment
What about the fact that now when you are lucky enough to get to see someone other than a nurse at your GP surgery you do not know if the person you have been booked in to see is a GP or a PA? This government wants to do away with GPs as much as possible. PAs instead of GPs or junior doctors can be paid more than junior doctors who are striking for more pay and better conditions.
I need to write about physician assistants
They are a mega health disaster in the making.