New figures show a further decline in the number of students joining nursing courses in England and Wales.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service has said 23,800 students have been accepted on to nursing courses for this academic year – 340 fewer than last year and 6,350 fewer than in 2021, a 20% decline over three years.
According to the Royal College of Nursing the situation is “as bad as it’s ever been” with numbers dropping to pre-pandemic levels after an upturn in 2020 and 2021.
Universities have seen a 0.9% rise in all subjects in the number of students compared with 2023 – the first increase in four years. But nursing courses have seen a 1.4% drop over the past 12 months.
RCN England executive director Patricia Marquis said the decline could “really impact the whole of society” for years to come.
Part of the reason for the decline was the lack of support for students, senior health sector figures said. At the Covid Inquiry this week England’s former chief nurse Dame Ruth May said the 2015 decision to replace the grant or bursary paid to student midwives and nurses with loans was “catastrophic”. As a result there was a fall of about 5,700 trainees in England by 2020, Dame Ruth said.
“There would have been less burnout – there would have been less psychological impact,” she said.
The RCN has called on the government to provide better financial backing for student nurses including starting salaries boosted from £30,000 to £35,000.
The Scottish government still provides non-repayable and non-means tested bursaries of £10,000 for student nurses but has still seen a decline of about 8% of nurses accepted on to courses.
Retirement, poor health, burnout, and a change in personal circumstances were the top four reasons cited for leaving the profession in Scotland. RCN Scotland figures show that half of working nurses left the profession before they planned, often as much as five years earlier, and 13.9% of leavers in 2023-24 had left within the first 10 years of qualifying.
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