Despite a 23% increase in the nursing workforce in England since 1997, urgent action is needed if the UK is to avoid a return to the chronic nursing shortages of the early 1990s. This looming crisis is revealed in a recently published report from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
The RCN’s annual Labour Market Review (LMR) shows that information used for NHS workforce planning remains inadequate and has worsened, despite repeated warnings from the RCN. For example, there is no information on how many newly qualified nurses start working in the UK and, incomplete or little information on vacancy rates and retirement behaviour.
Given an ageing nurse population, this information gap has become critical. Uncertainty over reductions in NHS funding after 2007, and possible associated redundancies and fragmentation of NHS services, raises real concerns about how many nurses the UK will have in the future.
The report highlights an ageing nurse population, particularly in the community where the average age is now 44. While new UK entrants to the nursing register are running at around 20,000 per year, the increased number of nurses retiring in the near future raises the issue of whether this is enough.
