Reports released this week confirm that Last July, 1,304 nurses from the EU joined the Nursing and Midwifery Council register, compared to 46 in April this year, a fall of 96%.
Government imposed pay restraints will mean that nurses will have had their pay cut by 12% by the end of the decade, limiting their pay rises to 1% per year until 2020 is just not viable if we are to retain and recruit the number of nurses the NHS need.
WE should be do everything within of power to train and recruit UK nurses however after the government axed bursaries for trainees in 2016. Numbers fell by 10,000 to 34,000 in 12 months.
There are around 360,000 nurses in England of which 13% are from outside the UK. this equates to UK 47,000 (Institute for Employment Studies), this tells us two things firstly immigration is a good thing and secondly our UK training and recruitment is poor. 47,000 nurses! Do we seriously believe that our health service could function without them? Do we believe that we should be using them as a bargaining tool in the Brexit negotiations?
- Firstly let’s do the right thing and confirm now that non UK nationals are welcome in the UK.
- We need to reward anyone who chooses such a demanding career therefore the pay cap should be lifted.
- We also need to reintroduce the bursary for nursing, and make it an attractive career.
NHS is 40,000 nurses short of what we need, we need to take action now to avoid longer term problems.