Universities have recruited “significantly less” numbers of students to adult nurse training places than was planned in recent months, which is expected to leave almost 300 course places empty by the end of the year, the national workforce planning body has said.
In addition, problems with filling district nursing and health visiting courses have also continued.
Earlier in the current academic year, universities were on track to fill their 14,160 training places for adult nurses commissioned by Health Education England in its workforce plan for 2015-16. But in recent board papers from July HEE said that, based on data from March, it now expected 2% – or 299 – of those places to remain vacant by the end of the academic year.
In the Kent, Surrey and Sussex region, despite additional recruitment activity, universities had been left with 85 adult nursing places empty in the spring out of the 244 for which they had been commissioned.
Full story in The Nursing Times 5 August 2016