In September this year, there were 808,488 nurses, midwives and nursing associates eligible to practise in the UK – a record high.
According to a report from Nursing and Midwifery Council there were 19,857 (2.5%) more registered professionals than just six months ago and 114,874 (16.6%) more than in September 2018.
There were 30,103 new joiners on the register in the six months to September, a 28% rise in numbers joining than in the same period in 2022 (23,565), and more than twice as many as in the same period five years ago (April to September 2018: 14,311 joiners).
The NMC’s register includes nurses working in the private sector and through agencies as well as NHS staff, and does not include all leavers who had quit within the past three years.
The high numbers were partly accounted for by the fact just over half (15,067) of these new joiners were educated in the UK. It is the highest number of domestic joiners ever in the first half of a financial year, and nearly 25% higher than in the same period last year (12,104), and was put down to the “Chris Whitty effect” when there was a surge in interest in nursing courses in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Under the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan for England, nursing training places need to rise by 65-80% above last year’s levels to meet 2031 targets.
This has led unions to say the recruitment rise has not made a significant difference to the pressures nurses and midwives feel on the frontline.
And Stuart Tuckwood, national nursing officer at the union Unison, has told the Financial Times that “the NHS workforce crisis hasn’t gone away”, noting that the number of students starting nursing degrees had fallen 12% in the past year.
Tuckwood pointed out that despite the rise in UK-trained workers, the UK was still dependent on foreign staff. He said: “Around half of new nurses are from overseas and without them, the NHS would collapse.”
India was the biggest single source of international recruits, found the report, which highlighted how nurses were still being recruited from World Health Organisation “red list” countries. India is not on the red list, but there was a “concerning trend” in rising numbers joining the UK register from Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia – all countries on the red list that employers are meant to avoid under a code of practice set out by the Department of Health and Social Care. This stipulates that health providers should not actively recruit from less well-off countries that do not have many nurses.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s report found that 3,071 nurses joined the UK-wide nursing and midwifery register from red list countries in the six months to 30 September, taking the total to 24,905.
A DoH spokesperson said: “Our published Code of Practice is clear that whilst recognising an individual’s right to migrate, organisations should not actively recruit from [World Health Organisation] red list countries.”
Ruth May, chief nursing officer for England, told the FT she was “thrilled that we now have record numbers of registered nurses”.
“Recognising that we need to go further, the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan commits to doubling the number of adult nurse training placements by 2031,” she added.
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