Will Shortening Nursing Degrees Prove A Costly Mistake?

“Training on the job or spending less time in education are both high risk moves that could compromise the supply of highly skilled nursing staff needed.” Nicola Ranger, RCN Director of Nursing

The time it takes to complete a nursing degree could be reduced by six months as a way to address chronic staffing shortages in the NHS.

The plan would mean student nurses could qualify after two and a half years, instead of the usual three.

Concerns Over Student Nurse Burnout

Current Student Nurses explained that it is already challenging enough to fit the required 2,300 practice hours and additional theory needed to qualify into three years. They warned that plans to shorten this by 6 months could end up driving overstretched students to burn out and quit before qualifying.

Do you think that increasing the pressure on student nurses to complete their studies in 6 fewer months will lead to increasing levels of burnout, both before qualification and in the early years of a nurse’s career? And if so, what effect will this have on the ability of health services to recruit and retain staff?

Could This Impact Patient Safety?

There are also grave concerns about the impact that such a plan might have on patient safety.

Three years was the “bare minimum” needed for a nursing degree according to Kevin Crimmons, head of adult nursing at Newman University.

"The ultimate concern I have is patient safety. You’re going to have students that are having an inferior education," he told Nursing Standard.

“Currently, for students studying a nursing degree only 18 months of that first three years are actually spent in university. Are they saying we could shorten that further when already it’s a big ask to try and cram in an honours degree level worth of knowledge into what amounts to be a part-time university course because of placement hours?” he continued.

Are concerns about patient safety justified? Do you think shorter degree study time will mean newly qualified nurses are not as well prepared as their colleagues who graduated under the existing regime?

“Training on the job or spending less time in education are both high risk moves that could compromise the supply of highly skilled nursing staff needed.” Nicola Ranger, RCN Director of Nursing

What Is The Department Of Health & Social Care Saying?

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said, “We are continually improving medical and nursing training and have introduced innovations including blended online nursing degrees and medical and nursing apprenticeships, alongside increasing the number of hours of simulated training, providing greater flexibility”.

Could Students Numbers Be The Problem, Not Time?

However, as the RCN director of nursing Nicola Ranger explained: “The real issue is the shortage of students, not the time it takes. The policy to fix these shortages is to cover the tuition fees and costs of university for nursing students to rapidly boost numbers.”

Would the government be better off increasing the number of study places available for nursing degrees, rather than shortening degrees for the already insufficient number of student nurses?

NHS Planning To Expand Apprenticeship Schemes

The government is reportedly also aiming to increase the number of nurses qualifying through apprenticeship schemes.

In June 2023, NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard revealed that the NHS was aiming to expand apprenticeship schemes over the coming years, with the target of having up to a third of nurses trained on the job.

Do you think the acute staff shortages that already exist mean that enlarging nursing apprenticeship places won’t necessarily result in more nurses working in the health service, as the staff required for training and mentoring apprentices will be too busy with other duties, or simply too exhausted to ensure apprentices are learning what they need to?

What Do You Think?

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