Ruth May has discussed the ongoing shortages of nurses across the country and how the government’s previous pledge for 50,000 more nurses is now ‘not enough’.

At one of her first in-person speeches since the start of the pandemic, the chief nursing officer for England said that the nursing workforce remained a big focus’ for her team due to the ‘shortage’ of nursing staff nationally. She said work to address the gaps was centred on the three areas of international recruitment, domestic training, and retention.

Numbers of nurses being recruited from overseas annually had risen from around 5,000 to 6,000 before the pandemic, to an expected 20,000 in this financial year. However, she suggested that international recruitment was needed on such a scale to help address the shortfall caused by the decision to end free education for nurses in England from 2017 onwards.

As part of her appearance at the League of St Bartholomew’s Nurses event, May also revealed that she thought the removal of the student nurse bursary in England was ‘fundamentally the wrong decision’. As a result of the move, May said that we have seen ‘the lowest numbers of people coming on to the register than we have seen in many years’.

May said that the 50,000 pledge was welcome because it gave the government impetus to ‘focus on and invest in the future supply of nurses’, but, after being questioned by a delegate about how many nurses the country truly needed now, May said current targets fell short.

She said the 50,000 target was the ‘right ambition at the time’ and was ‘sufficiently challenging’.