Nursing: Higher Education Investment

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Last month my mum celebrated her 95th birthday. Like many Irish nurses of her age, 75 years ago she travelled to London from Ireland to start her career in the very first generation of NHS nurses by qualifying as a state enrolled nurse at Warlingham Park psychiatric hospital. Growing up, I saw at first hand just how vital a dedicated, passionate and happy nurse was for the welfare of the patients. That is why I am incensed when I see the treatment of trainee nurses today. Let us be clear. Nursing students are exceptional. Their courses are complex, their training is tough, and they spend significant amounts of time on clinical placement, working all hours of the day and night. They deserve a tuition and living cost funding model that recognises their extraordinary efforts and the importance of those efforts.

England is now the only country in the UK without some form of bursary for the nursing degree. That has crumbled the number of nursing applications and fostered an environment that is utterly unfair to nursing students and completely unsafe for patients. The Government promised that reforms would provide up to 10,000 additional nursing and health professional training places but, since the loss of the bursary, nursing applications in England are down by a third and falling fast. In fact, the 2018 figure was the lowest since nursing courses were first included in the UCAS system.

Nursing must be made an attractive profession for all groups, and restoring the bursary is a fundamental step to achieving that. Now is not the time to experiment with funding models for nursing students. One in three nurses is due to retire within the decade. Ensuring the long-term recruitment of new nurses must be a Government priority. That, of course, is before we take account of the Brexit impact: 75% of NHS trusts have done nothing to prepare for the UK’s departure from the EU. Meanwhile, there is an alarming trend for nurses and midwives to leave the profession before retirement, citing intolerable working conditions. However, it is not a numerical conundrum. It is a national crisis. A fall in student numbers is simply exacerbating our current recruitment shortage and it is patients who are being put at risk.

Ms H, a student nurse in London, contacted me this morning:

“I’ve felt completely unsafe on many occasions because of short staffing, not just because of my personal protection but more so because of the safety of the patients that I care for”.

Her colleague, Ms Y, found a young patient on an adolescent ward with a ligature tied around her neck. Short staffing meant that there was no one to debrief, and in fact no one even realised that it was a student who found the young patient. Ms H said:

“Most weeks of my final year as a student nurse I have cut out sleeping an average of 2 nights per week. Staying awake for 36 hours is the only way I can afford to train, study, and work to sustain a living.”

And yet her main grievance is not about the present, but the future:

“It just doesn’t feel like there is really light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, we will just enter a longer tunnel of a career completely unsupported by Government.”

The warning signs are loud and clear. The conditions described today are unfit for those who selflessly care for our most vulnerable. The devastating consequences of leaving the system broken would be felt for decades to come.