Written question WQ86964
- Asked by
- Laura Anne JonesConservative
- To be answered by
- Minister for Health and Social Services
- Tabled
- Due
- Answered
- Time to answer
- 10 days
Question
What action is the Welsh Government taking to encourage Welsh students into nursing degrees?
Answer
Answered by Minister for Health and Social Services
The Welsh Government is committed to providing the NHS the workforce it needs to meet ever increasing demand. We are achieving this through increased training places and encouraging young people to take up health professions.
We are investing record levels in training and education for NHS Wales, with £262.295m of funding allocated in 2022-23. This continues to be a record level of funding and will support the highest ever number of training opportunities in Wales. We have more training places than ever before, and over the next five years we will train 12,000 more doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and psychologists.
For the last six years, since 2016 nurse training places have increased by 69%
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
Training places
1418
1750
1911
1911
1987
2202
2396
The Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) for Wales is committed to inspiring people to select the nursing and midwifery professions as the healthcare professional career of choice in Wales. We are doing this by working with HEIW and the Higher Education providers across Wales, retaining the NHS bursary for student nurses (currently under review to ensure they remain competitive) and exploring opportunities to attract new healthcare professional students to Wales both through widening access opportunities and showcasing health and care career opportunities available across Wales.
We recognise the impact of the increasing cost of living on healthcare professional students and are currently in the process of reviewing the NHS Bursary scheme to make Wales an attractive place to study and practice nursing and midwifery.
The aim of reviewing the non-repayable NHS Bursary scheme is to ensure it offers a comparable package of support against other repayable schemes and countries but also incentivises individuals following qualification to work within the healthcare sector in Wales.
Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) are also leading on the development of a sustainable national workforce plan for nursing to enable focused workforce solutions which will address the underlying attraction, recruitment, and retention challenges.