Nursing and Midwifery Council survey shows number of departures has risen by 51% in four years

More midwives and nurses are leaving the profession in the UK than joining for the first time on record, with the number departing having risen by 51% in just four years.

The figures, which will add to concerns about NHS staff shortages, show that 20% more people left the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register than joined it in 2016/17. The overall number of leavers was 34,941, compared with 23,087 in 2012/13.

While concerns have previously been raised about a large drop in EU registrants in the wake of the Brexit vote, the NMC figures, published on Monday, show that it is the departure of UK nurses – who make up 85% of the register – that is having the biggest impact. In 2016/17, 29,434 UK nurses and midwives left the register, up from 19,818 in 2012/13, and 45% more UK registrants left than joined last year.

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Unions say there is a shortage of 40,000 nurses and 3,500 midwives in England alone and they, and NHS trusts, blamed the pay cap and workplace pressures.

Saffron Cordery, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, said: “The NHS is severely stretched and we need to keep and value our staff. This is important for the quality and particularly the continuity of care. We need to follow through on the investment in training staff by consolidating and building on their skills, motivating them and giving them reasons to stay in the NHS.”

After consecutive yearly rises in the number of people on the register since 2013, the number fell by 1,783 in 2016/17. It has dropped more steeply since then, by a further 3,264 in April and May.

The average age of those leaving the register has fallen from 55 in 2013 to 51. Of those who left in 2016/17, 2,901 were in the 21-30 age group, almost double the 2012/13 number.



Janet Davies, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said patients were paying the price of government policy. “The average nurse is £3,000 worse off in real terms compared with 2010,” she said. “The 1% cap means nursing staff can no longer afford to stay in the profession and scrapping student funding means people can no longer afford to join it.”



Davies said it was worrying that many were going abroad. The NMC logged 4,153 “verification requests” from overseas licensing authorities – mostly in Australia, the US and Ireland – in relation to UK registrants in 2016/17.



An NMC survey of more than 4,500 nurses and midwives who left the register over the previous 12 months found that about a half had retired. Among those who had not, the top three reasons cited for leaving were working conditions, including staffing levels (44%), a change in personal circumstances, such as ill health (28%), and disillusionment with the quality of patient care (27%). Other reasons included leaving the UK (18%) and poor pay and benefits (16%).



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Jon Skewes, the Royal College of Midwives’s director for policy, employment relations and communications, said: “The incredible pressures midwives are under due to increasing demands on services are a factor here. This combined with years of pay freezes and pay restraint has left our health professionals demoralised and disillusioned.”

The number of EU workers – who make up 5% of the register – leaving increased to 3,081 from 1,173 in 2012/2013. There were 247 responses to the NMC survey from EU registrants, with 32% saying Brexit had persuaded them to consider working elsewhere.



A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “We are making sure we have the nurses we need to continue delivering world-class patient care – that’s why there are almost 13,100 more on our wards since May 2010 and 52,000 in training.”

The spokeswoman highlighted the NHS Improvement programme to increase staff retention, which launched last week. However, Cordery said it would have limited impact unless the pay cap and “unsustainable workplace pressures” were addressed.

