As the first year of the month comes to a close, NHS England announced some rare good news. According to their new data, there have never been more nurses or midwives working in the health services as there are today.
The data shows the number of nurses and midwives working in the NHS in England is now at 372,411. According to NHS England, this is the highest recorded number ever, meaning there over 20,000 more in the NHS workforce going into this winter compared with last year.
NHS chiefs credited this ‘unprecedented’ growth in the NHS workforce to the health service opening new routes into the professions and expanding international recruitment and retention initiatives, with Dame Ruth May, Chief Nursing Officer for England, saying: ‘It's good to see today's figures which show growth in these roles across the NHS. Of course, we still have some way to go which is why it is vital we continue to build our workforce as set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan – through increasing the number of future nurses and midwives in training and improving retention. Key to this is improving the experiences of our colleagues who work so hard to provide patients and the public with the very best care.’
The boost in nursing numbers is clearly good news for the NHS and the UK, but more cynical minds might suggest that a greater problem looms down the road. For years, organisations such as the RCN have warned that without retaining experienced nurses, recruitment drives create a false economy. The RCN recently called on all employers of practice nursing staff in England to act to provide their staff with an increase in pay in line with the increased funding they will soon receive. The British Medical Association's General Practitioners Committee England has joined the RCN to issue a joint statement encouraging employers to increase pay.
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With nurse wages still depressed after years of pay restraint, precious little is being done to make nursing the attractive life-long profession it is often thought of as.