Found: I have also held a senior post in a 100 bed hospital and nurses’ training centre in Lesotho, and spent

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to encourage more people to train as nurses.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The National Health Service has faced chronic workforce shortages for years, but the Government will build a health service fit for the future. We will make sure the NHS has the staff it needs to be there for all of us when we need it.

Training the necessary staff will take time, but we are committed to training more nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals, and will work closely with a range of partners across the health and education sectors to do so, while highlighting the benefits of nursing as a career. We will also ensure there are a range of routes into a nursing career, such as apprenticeships and undergraduate courses.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the number of nursing associates who completed training in 2023-24.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

The Department does not hold the information requested. As a guide to the scale of nursing associates completing training, the number of nursing associates joining the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register for the first time is published twice a year by the NMC. The latest available data, to September 2023, is available at the following link:

https://www.nmc.org.uk/about-us/reports-and-accounts/registration-statistics/

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many training places for district nurses her Department plans to make available in September 2025.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

The NHS Long Term Workforce, published on 30 June 2023, sets out an ambition to increase the number of district nursing training places to 842 in 2025.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many training places for nursing students there were in England in the 2023-24 financial year; and how many places there will be in the (a) 2024-25 and (b) 2025-26 financial year.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

Since 2017, universities have set the number of available nursing training places based on market demand. The Department does not set figures for the number of places. Data published by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service shows that the number of accepted applicants to undergraduate nursing courses in England for 2023 was 20,790.

The NHS Long term Workforce Plan published in June 2023 outlines the nursing training intakes which underpin the plans ambitions across academic rather than financial years, and NHS England will work with the university sector to help achieve this. Across all nursing training intakes, including undergraduate, postgraduate and apprenticeships, these are 32,124 in 2025 academic year, and 33,981 in 2026 academic year.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the underlying cause of the fall in each of the past three years in applications to university nursing courses, as reported by the Financial Times on 15 February, and what action they are taking to reverse the trend.

Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)

The drop in nursing applicants follows unprecedented demand for healthcare courses during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the number of applicants continues to outstrip the places on offer. Nursing training places are competitive, and lead to an attractive and important career in the National Health Service.

We are working closely with NHS England, universities and the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service to ensure everyone who wants to pursue a rewarding healthcare career in nursing has the support and opportunities to do so.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the necessary proportion of full time equivalent general nurses who become full time equivalent specialist nurses after accreditation to meet NHS workforce need.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

The information on the number and proportion of nurses who become specialist nurses after accreditation is not held centrally. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) sets the standards for education for the nursing profession. There is though no regulator required post registration educational preparation for most specialist nursing roles. An employer would be responsible for creating the number of specialist nursing posts they require, based on population need. It would be expected that an organisation would develop registered nurses into specialist roles, with support from regional funding. This funding enables the development of, for example, advanced practitioners and nurse prescribers.

The NMC do publish data on registered Specialist Community Public Health Practitioners who hold specific recordable qualifications. This will not include all postgraduate training and nurses may be employed in a range of settings inside and outside of the English National Health Service. The data is available at the following link:

https://www.nmc.org.uk/about-us/reports-and-accounts/registration-statistics/

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan set out that the NHS would focus on expanding the number of clinicians, including nurses, who train to take up enhanced and advanced roles, and work as part of multidisciplinary teams that have the right skills to meet the changing needs of patients. Supporting clinicians to train as enhanced and advanced practitioners will also help to retain staff by offering a valuable career progression opportunity.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets the ambition of training at least 3,000 advanced practitioners in 2023/24 and 2024/25, and increasing the number in training further to 5,000 a year by 2028/29. By 2031/32, we expect that more than 6,300 clinicians will start training to become advanced practitioners each year.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of full time equivalent general nurses become full time equivalent specialist nurses after accreditation.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

The information on the number and proportion of nurses who become specialist nurses after accreditation is not held centrally. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) sets the standards for education for the nursing profession. There is though no regulator required post registration educational preparation for most specialist nursing roles. An employer would be responsible for creating the number of specialist nursing posts they require, based on population need. It would be expected that an organisation would develop registered nurses into specialist roles, with support from regional funding. This funding enables the development of, for example, advanced practitioners and nurse prescribers.

The NMC do publish data on registered Specialist Community Public Health Practitioners who hold specific recordable qualifications. This will not include all postgraduate training and nurses may be employed in a range of settings inside and outside of the English National Health Service. The data is available at the following link:

https://www.nmc.org.uk/about-us/reports-and-accounts/registration-statistics/

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan set out that the NHS would focus on expanding the number of clinicians, including nurses, who train to take up enhanced and advanced roles, and work as part of multidisciplinary teams that have the right skills to meet the changing needs of patients. Supporting clinicians to train as enhanced and advanced practitioners will also help to retain staff by offering a valuable career progression opportunity.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets the ambition of training at least 3,000 advanced practitioners in 2023/24 and 2024/25, and increasing the number in training further to 5,000 a year by 2028/29. By 2031/32, we expect that more than 6,300 clinicians will start training to become advanced practitioners each year.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what training the NHS provides to nursing staff on (a) accountability and (b) reporting (i) suspicious activities and (ii) concerns.

Answered by Will Quince

All registered nurses must uphold the Code of Practice set by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). The NMC can act if those on their register fail to uphold the Code.

All National Health Service organisations and others providing NHS healthcare services in primary and secondary care in England are required to adopt the national Freedom to Speak Up policy as a minimum standard to help normalise speaking up for the benefit of patients and workers, including nursing staff. Its aim is to ensure all matters raised are captured and considered appropriately and the policy should be clear and regularly communicated to support learning and improvement. It is the individual employer’s responsibility to ensure that all mandatory training is completed by employees.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 3 July 2023, for what reason he plans to reduce the number of trainee children's nurses.

Answered by Will Quince

NHS England’s initial assessment is that there is currently a sufficient number of training places to meet demand for children’s nursing, but this will be kept under review. The modelling within this Plan will be independently verified and further information will be provided in due course.

The model will be kept up to date, aligning service, finance and workforce planning much more closely together in future years. As programme teams collate more data, the impact of integrated care systems feeds through and as our actions start to be delivered, we can more precisely predict workforce demand.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of the restoration of the nurse’s bursary.

Answered by Will Quince

The Student Loans Company provides the primary funding support package for students in further education. Student loan repayments are unlike commercial loans, with built-in protections, including repayments linked to income and not based on interest rates or the amount borrowed, and with outstanding loan amounts written off after 30 years. Student loans are subsidised by the taxpayer, this is a conscious investment in the skills and people of this country.

In addition to this, eligible nursing students have access to supplementary funding support via the NHS Learning Support Fund, which offers a non-repayable grant of £5,000 per academic year plus additional grants and supports depending on their circumstances.

Found: Nurses: Training 10 July 2023 | UIN 192386 Asked by: Damien Moore To ask the Secretary of State

Found: measured through pupil survey • Development of CWSW Professionals Guide, for DSLs, SWs and School Nurses

Found: This includes 42% of learning disability nurses and 30% of both adult nurses and mental health nurses

Found: support is provided as part of care with the majority of practitioners being Registered Mental Health Nurses