Responding to research showing how the NHS has struggled to retain nursing staff, with mental ill health and lack of career progression among the strongest drivers for nurses leaving, RCN Chief Nursing Officer Professor Lynn Woolsey said:

“This analysis provides some welcome lessons from the near past about what happens when you fail to focus and invest in retaining nursing staff.  It is no surprise that it identifies a lack of career progression as being key in pushing experienced nursing staff out the door. The government has started to turn the dial on this issue, but this research highlights the urgency with which we need to deliver wider nursing pay and career reform.

“It’s a tragedy to see how nursing staff suffering mental ill health are so much more likely to leave the profession. These are highly skilled and safety-critical professionals and losing one from the NHS is one too many. It benefits nobody, certainly not patients, our health service or government, to educate and recruit nursing staff, only to see them leave. Ministers need to acknowledge and address the impact of service pressures on staff retention and employers need to deliver better support.

“Retaining more of our brilliant nurses must be a priority in the upcoming workforce plan. It must centre nursing as the largest workforce delivering the vast majority of care, setting out in detail and with funding how the profession will be valued, both in how they are recruited and retained. Failing to do so will see the mistakes of the past repeated, more pressure placed on an already exhausted workforce and hopes of transforming care at even greater risk.”

Ends

Notes to editors

How staff joined the NHS under the 50,000 nurses programme – and why they left