NHS ‘to lose 100,000 nurses over 10 years’

The Queen Margaret University study, commissioned by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), examined eight possible sequences of events taking into account training places for nurses and midwives, rates of retirement and overseas recruitment.

The RCN warned the results show how small policy changes can have a large long-term effect on staff numbers.

Chief executive and general secretary Dr Peter Carter said: “This report highlights what the truly shocking scale of losses could be to the nursing workforce in England over the next 10 years.

“A loss of more than a quarter of the nursing workforce would be hugely damaging to patient care.

“The nursing workforce has grown in recent years, but only just enough to keep up with rising demands on healthcare. Urgent and immediate action is now needed to prevent a return to the chronic shortages of the early 1990s.”

The NHS must save £20bn by 2015 and concerns over nursing jobs follow warnings the health service faces “unprecedented” financial pressures. Of nearly 300 chief executives and chairmen surveyed earlier this month, four in 10 said their financial situation was the “worst they had ever experienced”.

Health services across Yorkshire are facing brutal cuts totalling more than £400m as the battle begins to deliver the biggest-ever savings programme in the NHS.

A Yorkshire Post survey in April confirmed the region’s hospitals were expected to bear the brunt of efficiency savings of nearly £300m which are likely to lead to several thousand job losses including front-line staff.