NIGEL DOWNES
RESEARCH shows that you are 26% more likely to die if your stay in hospital is on a ward with an insufficient number of trained nursing staff.
That’s a terrifying fact – and so everyone should welcome the news that the Welsh Government is to continue with its bursary for eligible nursing and healthcare students.
The bursary will help to support nursing students to undertake their training within Wales, and without those students coming through to replace the nurses who are leaving the profession, the future wellbeing of those needing care could be diminished.
That’s the stark reality. There is already a crisis in the number of nurses working within Wales, and across the UK for that matter, and so recruitment is vital – we need to get it right.
Although the number of student entries has been increased in Wales in the past couple of years, and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, the fact remains that prior to that we simply did not train enough nurses to replace those who were leaving the profession through retirement or dissatisfaction with their job – whether that was down to poor pay or through burnout because of the stressful nature of the work.
And it’s a vicious circle because understaffed wards simply add to the stress for the staff left to care for their patients.
So at RCN in Wales we are delighted with the announcement from Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services Vaughan Gething that the bursary award will continue for students in the 2019 cohort.
As some may know, the bursary in England was withdrawn in 2017 and it hasn’t been replaced – and since this date there has been a decreasing number of student nurse entries in England.
At our recent RCN Congress in Belfast, there was a discussion on student bursaries and the need to support the reintroduction of the bursary in England.
Student nurses in England outlined the real hardship that they are facing and the fact that many need to take out loans in the region of £40,000 to £50,000 just to complete their training.
So while we welcome Welsh Government’s support for nurse training in Wales, we are concerned that as the bursary for English students has been withdrawn and not replaced, the issue of UK nurse recruitment isn’t likely to go away.
The importance of the bursary for Welsh students cannot be underestimated.
One newly-qualified registered nurse in north Wales said: “Thanks to the Welsh Government bursary, I didn’t have to get myself into even more debt by training – I already have a student debt of £22,000 from my first degree.
“Training to be a nurse without the financial cushion of the bursary would have pushed me into owing more than £40,000.
“There would be no way I could ever have paid that back before I retired, so morally it was wrong. I don’t think it’s right that future generations – my children’s generation – are saddled with the training debts of their parents through their taxes.”
Students who complete their training in 2020 and take out the bursary in Wales will also have to work within Wales for the first two years following their study.
The Welsh Government firmly believes that if it invests in nurses when they are undertaking their training that nurses give something back to Wales.
This can only be good for the people of Wales, as hopefully this will mean an increase in nursing numbers across all sectors within the country.
As well as continuing to fund nurse trainees, the Welsh Government has also brought in legislation that demands each acute ward in the Welsh NHS has the appropriate level of nurses to patients.
Following a sustained campaign by the RCN in Wales, this became the first such legislation in Europe and is something that the people of Wales should be proud of – Wales is definitely leading the way.
This further demand on ensuring that there enough nurses staffing our wards may put real pressure on the number of nurses in the profession and so it is vital that the number of nursing students and the bursary continue within Wales.
Another change for Wales is the introduction of a new body, Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), which has recently been set up to oversee and make decisions on recruitment to healthcare, including the numbers of nursing students needed.
As it’s a new body – and we are unsure of its full workings – the RCN will ensure that there is transparency and scrutiny of HEIW’s plans about how it decides on the numbers of student nurses within Wales.
We will also continue to work in partnership with the Welsh Government to lobby for it to continue into the future, to ensure that patient safety and wellbeing is central to all nursing activities and workforce planning.
Finally, in order to continue the upward trend of student nurse numbers within Wales, we need to ensure the bursary remains and that student nurses graduate and work within Wales for many years to come.