What Is the Nursing and Midwifery Council Doing About Nursing Shortages?
We’re publishing an original post today by Dr. Ann Bradshaw, a retired Senior Lecturer in Adult Health Care at Oxford Brookes University. She notes that the Government is importing nurses from Kenya as a stop-gap measure to address the shortage of trained nurses, but she isn’t happy with the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) proposals to address the crisis long-term. Here is an extract:
The NMC is planning a new policy that will reduce placement practice and replace it with simulation in the classroom. This is despite a promise made to the Government in 1988, in response to Secretary of State John Moores. He granted permission to move nurse training to higher education, but warned of “fears that the changes would place nurse education predominantly in a classroom setting, thus unacceptably reducing the practical, patient-orientated content of training”. In fact, he placed on record the joint understanding that nursing education must retain its clinical focus and students would not spend substantially less time in clinical areas than at present. (Letter of John Moores to Audrey Emerton, May 20th 1988).
And the NMC policy is not only reneging on the professional body’s promise to John Moores but also betrays its official response to the Francis Report, which stated categorically that nursing students would continue to spend half their training in clinical settings (albeit as supernumerary learners rather than as salaried members of the workforce).
Worth reading in full.
