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University courses hit by NHS cuts in training programme
Economies will leave future health service short of workers
Nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy and radiography courses have all been severely depleted, as have community-care programmes.
Vice-chancellors have given warning that the cuts are likely to cause a boom-and-bust cycle in healthcare provision that may later result in the closure of university departments.
In Central, South West and the East of England, student numbers have dropped this year by as much as a quarter. Overall they have dropped 13 per cent, as health authorities pull contracts.
England’s nursing and allied-health students are paid for via contracts between the strategic health authorities (SHAs) and the universities. Last year 97,000 students were taking such degrees.
At the University of the West of England (UWE), a loss of £900,000 in contracts has resulted in 114 fewer students this year, and the end of all conversion courses for nurses wanting to retrain either as midwives and health visitors or to work in the community.
Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire SHA made savings of £7.8 million in training programmes in 2005-06 and is continuing to do so. The fear, says Steve West, UWE’s deputy vice-chancellor, is that the cuts will continue.
“Our health-visiting, districtnursing and midwifery conversion courses have all been cut, gone, closed,” he said.
“It’s becoming very difficult to sustain our commitment to the NHS when our budgets keep being cut.”
England’s SHAs made savings or “underspent” last year by £524 million, but they are now being asked to set aside a further minimum of £350 million for a contingency fund.
Much of this money, argues the Council of Deans for Nursing and Health Professions, is coming out of their education and training budgets. This is resulting in the loss of academics and contracts for nurses and and other health professionals.
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“The worry is that the reduction in student numbers means a cut in numbers of newly qualified staff in 2009-10, and a serious concern is that we’ll get into the boom-and-bust cycle we had in the 1990s,” said Paul Turner, executive officer of the Council of Deans for Nursing and Health Professions.
At Oxford Brookes university, the job cuts have begun already. June Girvin, dean of the School of Health and Social Care, said that having been warned to expect a 10 per cent drop in contracts next year, amounting to a loss of at least £875,000, she has been forced to make redundancies. “If we have to live with that reduction in income, we have to make a reduction in staff,” she said. “So at the moment we are looking at losing 20 staff.”
Janet Finch, vice-chancellor of Keele University and chair of University UK’s health and social care committee, accepts that the health service must tighten its belt, but says in future it must prevent universities becoming involved in a stop-go scenario that results in shortages of key professionals a few years on. She said: “Universities need to be involved because we are in the position of delivering what the NHS wants,”
David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that the crisis in the NHS was clearly spilling over into universities. “The health authorities are now cutting their payments so severely that they are jeopardising the finances of many universities,” he said.
UNDER THE KNIFE
Is a qualified learning disability nurse and totally dismayed at the lack of jobs available at a local level. I'm currently travelling 50 miles each way to an NHS job that pays only 19,166 per annum. I'm working for about £100 per week after travel and normal household bills. This leaves me looking for other careers outside of nursing. Interestingly I can work at a local supermarket on a checkout for the same money and alot less responsibility. It makes me wonder why anybody would want to train as a nurse anymore with few jobs, low pay and no thanks
Jo Wright, Wirral, Merseyside