Before the outbreak of COVID-19 students completing a first degree nursing received a bursary up to £16,454 in order to increase NHS nurses in this country. This bursary included payment of tuition fees up to £9000 and a maintenance grant of £1000. In the 2015 spending review, George Osbourne (the then chancellor of the exchequer) announced that bursaries for future nurses were to be scrapped in favour of student loans. 

Since implementation of this policy, the number of applicants for nursing courses has continued to reduce. This, of course, impacting on the number of registered nurses applying for full-time vacancies, which in the first quarter of 2019-20 equated to 43,617 missing staff (Mitchell, 2019).

Commencing September 2020, Boris Johnson's government have implemented a £5,000 a year maintenance grant to assist with living costs. Whilst this is a first-victory, it does not consider the students who started began their degrees from 2017-2019, and the tuition fees many of us will still be paying. 

Many student nurses are completing this degree carrying debt of £30,000-£70,000. 

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Following the outbreak of COVID-19, students are now experiencing unprecedented challenges to their degree. Student nurses, midwives and nursing associates provide a significant contribution to healthcare teams in the delivery of safe, effective and person-centred care whilst in our placements with the vast majority of us paying for the facilitation of these placements.

Many of us are now being asked to extended our current placement to 6 months in order to support the rising pressures of the COVID-19 outbreak, which of course many of us are happy to do and have already been supporting this in a variety of capacities.

Amidst all of the uncertainties of continuing extended work on the frontlines during the pandemic, student nurses are still balancing the pressures of academia these proving causative agents for new levels of stress for student nurses, midwives and AHPs at this time. 

As a student nurse, I can confirm this degree has already proved challenging in terms maintaining an equilibrium of mental health and wellbeing, maintaining family life, working alongside the degree and experiencing financial issues - 1 in 4 nursing students leave their course before graduation due to a lack of financial support. How does this impact the current deficit of nurses in England?

Please campaign and support your student nurses, midwives and AHPs.

We are campaigning for student nurses working during COVID-19 pandemic to have their retroactive student fees waived.

"When a person decides to become a nurse, they make the most important decision of their lives. They choose to dedicate themselves to the care of others." -Margaret Harvey

Mitchell, G. (2019) 'NHS nurse vacancies in England rise to more than 43,000', Nursing Times, available at: https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/workforce/nhs-nurse-vacancies-in-england-rise-to-more-than-43000-08-10-2019/