The government’s plans to scrap NHS bursaries will leave student nurses, midwives and allied health professionals with over £52,000 worth of debt. The fear of debt will discourage many people from becoming healthcare professionals, exacerbating the current recruitment crisis. This will have disastrous repercussions for patient safety.
UNISON and the NUS have commissioned a report by London Economics which shows that removing the bursary will:
- Put thousands of healthcare students and graduates into debt.
- Reduce the number of people taking up healthcare places in higher education by as many as 2000.
- Cause a fall in income for Higher education institutions of between £55m to £77m per student intake.
- Lead to a significant increase in staff shortages in the NHS which will increase dependancy on agency and overseas staff. The costs associated with this could wipe out all the potential savings the government claims removing the bursary will make.
You can read the report in full here.
Join the march – Bursary or Bust – on 4 June to show your support for healthcare students and our NHS.
Nurses, midwives and allied health professionals make an immense contribution to our NHS and our country as a whole – and yet the government plans to remove the NHS bursary, making it harder for the health workers of the future to receive the training they need, and harder for our health service to recruit much needed nurses and other health staff to care for us.
The government should be busting a gut to recruit more student nurses. And yet this governments desperate perseverance with austerity means that the future of the nursing profession, nurses livelihoods and the National Health Service have all been placed in jeaopardy.
UNISON believes this is a foolish plan – and that’s why we’re asking the government to pause before they make a serious error. We need to find a way to address the funding crisis facing students in the NHS – but not by plunging those same students into debt, and putting the future of our health service on the line.
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