Comment EDITOR’S COMMENTwith LOUISE FRAMPTON THE CLINICAL SERVICES JOURNAL Editor


Louise Frampton louiseframpton@stepcomms.com


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STEP COMMUNICATIONS ISSN No. 1478-5641


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The need for investment in the nursing workforce


At the time of writing this, the focus had turned to the urgent need to invest in the nursing workforce – with both the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN) highlighting the dire consequences of budgetary restrictions in healthcare. New analysis of NHS England data, published in May, revealed a decade of decline in NHS performance. The analysis by the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) included NHS England’s latest waiting list data [9 May] and showed the number of patients waiting more than a year for treatment had increased from around 700 in 2014, to over 300,000 in 2024. In accident and emergency departments, RCN said that the situation had become “even more desperate”, with the numbers of people waiting more than 12 hours increasing from just 23 in 2014 to over 42,000 a decade later. The overall number of treatments waiting to be carried out was 3 million in 2014, while today it has more than doubled to over 7.5 million. Professor Pat Cullen, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive, commented: “In ten years, the numbers on waiting lists have more than doubled, while dangerous 12-hour waits in A&E have gone from impacting just a handful of people to becoming the norm for tens of thousands…Nursing staff provide the vast majority of care but there are over 34,000 nurse vacancies in the NHS alone – with chronic shortages across every setting. Too few staff mean delays to care, which at their most serious lead to emergency admissions and stays in hospital. The result is a jam-packed NHS treating patients in corridors, doorways and even store cupboards. “The scale of the decline in the last ten years is staggering and the pandemic is not the root


cause. Behind these figures are people suffering in pain, many unable to get on with their lives. The prime minister must face the truth head on and acknowledge that bringing and keeping waiting lists down requires investment in the nursing workforce.” RCN’s call for investment in the nursing workforce coincided with International Nurses’ Day,


which takes place each year on 12 May. This year the theme was: Our Nurses. Our Future. The economic power of care. The theme was chosen by the International Council of Nurses and the organisation’s President, Dr. Pamela Cipriano, explained the reasoning behind the theme: “Despite being the backbone of healthcare, nursing often faces financial constraints


and societal undervaluation…ICN has chosen to focus on the economic power of care with the aim to reshape perceptions and demonstrate how strategic investment in nursing can bring considerable economic and societal benefits. We believe now is the time for a shift in perspective. We have seen time and again how financial crises often lead to budgetary restrictions in healthcare, typically at the expense of nursing services. This reductionist approach overlooks the substantial and often underemphasised economic value that nursing contributes to healthcare and society as a whole.” She concluded that “Policymakers, healthcare administrators, and even the general public


are often unaware or misinformed about the return on investment that adequate funding in nursing can provide.” The report also highlights data from 49 countries, which reveals that nurses earn below the


average salary of high-skilled workers in 34 countries and less than the average health sector worker in nearly half of these nations. ICN concludes that addressing the issues of overwork and underpayment is essential if healthcare systems worldwide are to be sustainable. In the UK, adequate funding to tackle nurse shortages is long overdue – we cannot continue


to plug the gap with staff from ‘Red List’ countries and must move away from short-term, unethical fixes.


louiseframpton@stepcomms.com Get in touch and give us your views, email me:


June 2024 I www.clinicalservicesjournal.com 5


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