A strategy to boost nurse recruitment

At a recent partnership meeting with my colleagues from our local higher education institute we reviewed the likely numbers of prospective preregistration nurses who have been offered a place to begin their programmes. This meeting revealed that we are barely able to meet our planned numbers.

Ford (2019) reported that, although applications to study nursing in England have increased by 4% from last year, they are still down by more than 15 000 since the removal of the bursary. Potential mature students are the most affected, with applications from those aged 25 and over seeing a reduction of 71% since 2016 (Ford, 2019).

With the national nursing vacancy position reported to being in excess of 40 000, alongside all of the multiple interventions that we are working on locally to transform roles, recruit and retain nurses, it is evident that we need to further strengthen our plans to grow our future supply of registered nurses.