Royal College of Nursing responds to CQC 'State of Care' Report
Responding to the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) annual report on the state of health and social care services, RCN England Director Patricia Marquis said:
"With this report, the official inspectors are putting England’s nursing shortage front and centre as a key reason for poor care – no area of care appears safe from the engulfing workforce crisis. Now that their concern is on record, it leaves Ministers with nowhere to turn – they must take immediate and firm action to address the 40,000 unfilled nurse jobs.
"The CQC is painting a picture of too many nurses reaching burnout or breaking point with patients paying the price. In A&E in particular, nursing staff and their colleagues are left trying to treat patients as best they can in a system without enough capacity or boots on the ground.
"While there are some examples on improved efforts to retain staff, the report reads as a catalogue of pressures and strains on the current workforce which it recognises are the driver of high turnover and vacancies across NHS and care.
"The independent inspection body backs calls made by the RCN and others for a coherent workforce plan and also puts on record its view that the removal of the bursary for nursing students led to a decline in people able to train. Now that it has been recognised here, the Government must act to put at least £1 billion extra per year into nursing education if it hopes to recover lost ground and fill these vital jobs."
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