How will the Conservative election pledge of 50,000 more nurses by 2024/25 be realised?
The pledge may well be broken without increased reliance on international recruitment
Now we know who is in government, we can revisit one of their controversial election promises.
The Conservative manifesto commitment was 50,000 more nurses by 2024/25. This was immediately brokered down to 31,000 additional ‘new’ nurses because part of the plan was to encourage about 19,000 existing nurses to stay on.
Assuming the money can be found – which is a big assumption – where will the 30,000 plus new nurses come from? And how will this be achieved within five years?
The latest analysis from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which publishes regular international comparative data on health sector staffing, gives us some clues.
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