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Decline in cancer nurse numbers could become legacy of student bursary cut

Encourage students to consider cancer specialty, Karen Roberts tells conference   Bursary cut may further reduce cancer nursing numbers, says Macmillan chief nurse 
Karen Roberts

Scrapping the NHS nursing student bursary has damaged the ‘pipeline’ into cancer nursing, a conference heard.


Macmillan Cancer Support’s chief of nursing Karen Roberts. Picture: Tim George

Macmillan Cancer Support’s chief of nursing Karen Roberts said she is deeply concerned by the loss of the bursary in England last year and how this will affect cancer nursing.

Speaking at the RCNi Cancer Nursing Practice conference 2018 in Birmingham on Wednesday, Dr Roberts said the abolition of the bursary, coupled with falling nurse numbers, was akin to ‘eating our young and spitting out our old’.

'The removal of the NHS bursary has definitely not helped the pipeline supplying nursing students into the profession,' she said.

She added that students who show an aptitude and interest in cancer nursing should be encouraged to consider advanced roles in the specialty.

Safe staffing levels

Dr Roberts called for ‘serious conversations’ to take place between NHS workforce planners, with input from nursing leaders, to ensure sufficient numbers of staff in cancer nursing.

She said Macmillan’s latest census of specialist cancer nurses and support workers in England shows vacancy rates for cancer nursing remain higher than the 3.2% UK average for health and social care roles.

In England, which has the highest vacancy rate in the UK for specialist cancer nurses, some regions have up to 11 unfilled posts for every 100 filled roles.

Dr Roberts told the conference that getting workforce planning wrong meant ‘we have the wrong nurses, in the wrong place, at the wrong time’.

‘Creating career cul-de-sacs’

Macmillan’s census, Cancer Workforce in England, also found that 28% of specialist cancer nurses were on band 5 or 6, which is 5% more than at the time of the previous census in 2014. 

Dr Roberts told the conference she was concerned that this rise, measured alongside a fall in band 7 nurses, meant: ‘We are potentially creating career cul-de-sacs, which we really cannot afford to be creating.’


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