Trainee nurses to work on wards

THOUSANDS of trainee nurses will be called up to help treat patients in the coronavirus crisis.

NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said some of the 18,000 students who are now in their final year of training would be ‘invited’ into clinical practice.

They are in their last 12 months of a threeyear degree and would start practising on hospital wards up to six months early without finishing their full training.

Mr Stevens explained that the NHS was working with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to ‘see how many of the 18,000 undergraduates are available’.

He told the Chief Nursing Officer’s summit in Birmingham: ‘Over the next month, three months, five months, our lives are going to be dominated by the response to coronavirus. It is going to be the single biggest challenge facing all European health services.

‘We are going to have to respond flexibly and pragmatically in the way the NHS always does.’

Meanwhile, doctors are going to be told to get ready to work outside their normal area of expertise. A letter will be sent out by the General Medical Council, which regulates doctors, urging them to be flexible and embrace new ways of working. The details have not been specified so far but one possible scenario is that doctors who normally work in the areas of outpatients or elective surgery would be moved on to intensive care or other wards.

The letter from GMC chiefs will also attempt to reassure doctors that they should not fear any ‘reprisals’ from the regulator for practising outside their normal area of specialism.