According to recent research, one in eight practice nurse places in the UK remain vacant and there are fears that the shortage may get worse if the Government implements plans to make nurses pay for their own training from August next year.

It is proposed that new nursing, midwifery and allied health students will no longer receive NHS bursaries from 1 August 2017 and will instead have to apply for student loans in the same way as students from mainstream courses.

As a spokesman for the General Practitioners’ Committee (GPC) pointed out, there is a serious recruitment and retention crisis in general practice nursing in the same way that there is for GPs, which adds to the problems in maintaining services for many practices and leaves other practice staff with unmanageable workloads. There are also fears that the shortage could damage patient care.

According to the GPC, the shortage is linked to the historic failure to invest in primary care nurse training, including the failure to fund grants to training practices. The spokesman for the Committee underlined the fact that urgent steps needed to be taken to tackle this serious problem.

His words were echoed by a spokesman for the Family Doctor Association, who warned of a ‘demographic timebomb’ among practice nurses due to natural retirement over the next five years. The organisation is advocating a more organised career structure for nurses, including postgraduate training for nurses who want to work in general practices.

Meanwhile, one of the authors of a major report on the primary care workforce last year, said that the shortage of practice nurses ‘had been an issue for a long time’, so was suggesting an equivalent of the ten point plan for nurses.