Nursing courses unfilled for third year in a row

Responding to the news that for the third year in a row the number of places on nursing courses has not been filled, with the Royal College of Nursing warning that Scotland does not have the number of nurses it needs to meet health and social care demands, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

“These alarming gaps stretch all the way back to Nicola Sturgeon cutting training places and claiming that was ‘sensible’. Now, staff are overwhelmed and stretched dangerously thin.

“Staff shortages bring big risks of putting patients in danger, while seriously compromising the quality of care.

“The SNP should be doing everything they can to promote nursing as a rewarding career. That should start by rewriting their failed NHS Recovery Plan so that it includes a strategy to recruit and retain staff and tackle burnout- a strategy that the SNP and Greens were wrong to vote down when my party brought it to parliament.”