opinion

How we can help

Cygnet Health Care director of Nursing David Wilmott suggests that the independent sector can take steps to allieviate the nursing recruitment crisis

The challenges facing nurse recruitment for both the NHS and independent sector will be familiar to many. What will also be familiar is healthcare commentators calling for more money as the solution. But – as is sometimes implied – is that the only remedy available?

The introduction of the £5,000-a-year maintenance grant for student nurses is, of course, to be warmly welcomed. But there are also a broader set of reforms which I believe can contribute to improving the recruitment of nurses in this country.

Indeed, I believe that those of us in the independent sector need to speak up more about what we think can be done (and that we can do) to support nursing recruitment.

And the good news is that there are several things that can be done now.

Understanding the problem The first thing to acknowledge is that across the public and independent sectors there are not enough new nurses entering the workforce in the first place. Indeed, on 5 March this year the National Audit Office warned that the NHS has 43,000 fewer nurses than it needs 1 . So, the point is that this is first and foremost a recruitment rather than simply a retention issue, with declining numbers of students applying to study nursing, coupled with a drop in the number of applications for nursing roles. Indeed, to put this decline into some historical context, while at the end of 2015 there were 103,826 applications for nursing and midwifery roles, this number had fallen to 91,189 by the end of 2017. 2 At the same time, NHS statistics show that, sadly, the quality of applications are declining, with fewer applicants being shortlisted – a drop of 47.1% between 2015 and 2017. In other words, not only is there a lack of people wanting to be nurses, but there’s also a lack of the most able people applying for nursing positions. David Wilmott, Cygnet Health Care

Treating the symptoms and the cause Money of course matters, so that is why it is good to see the government recently announce £975 million of funding earmarked to provide community mental health services.

The introduction of the £5,000 grant for student nurses is also a progressive move, and the additional £3,000 top-up for those training in sectors where care is harder to recruit – such as mental health or learning disability care – goes some way to recognising the challenge facing the profession. Beyond more investment, however, I would advocate a focus on three important areas.

First, while seeking to improve recruitment, we must not forget about retention. So we need to keep up the good work in changing work-life practices so that nurses stay in the profession. The good news is that the health service has started to tackle this and has, notably, included a commitment to flexible working policies as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.

Second, while the government has a difficult job in trying to please everyone when constructing new post-Brexit immigration rules, I hope (and I am hopeful) that ministers ensure we don’t limit the number of potential nursing recruits from overseas.

But I also believe passionately that UK healthcare as a whole, and especially the independent sector must not simply wait around for government to act. We should instead play our role too.

So the third area I would focus on is encouraging independent providers to develop new routes into nursing. This is something we have done at Cygnet Health Care and which we plan to develop further in the coming years. We call it our nursing associate apprenticeship programme – the first of its kind within the independent sector.

In a nutshell, the scheme enables apprentices to work in Cygnet hospitals for a minimum of 30 hours a week and then spend one day a week with the rest of their group studying and being supported by lecturers from the University of Wolverhampton or the Open University. I am delighted to say that we welcomed our fourth cohort of apprentices last month and we’re looking forward to congratulating the first graduates from the two-year programme this spring. We are committed to expanding and developing the scheme going forward. We are also now rolling out a new child and adolescent mental health services apprenticeship to develop our staff and extend our nursing career pathways.

I am of course realistic that the nursing gap facing this country will not be solved by one programme alone. Funding is a necessity and if we work collaboratively on sector-wide innovations to attract, retain and recognise nurses for their compassion and skill, then the money can have a greater impact that will ultimately bring benefits for the very people nurses are motivated by – their patients. n