Let's face the future together

摘要

As you took your well-earned holiday last summer, you probably missed the publication of the Institute for Employment Studies' (IES) report into the labour market for nurses in the UK (Marangozov et al, 2016). Just as well really, it does not make for happy reading. The report notes that the UK nursing workforce is 'characterised by cyclical patterns of shortage'. Perhaps I am alone in this, but I cannot recall the last time we had anything but a shortage of nurses. In a masterful use of understatement, the IES came to the following conclusion, that recent evidence suggests 'a broadening out of localised skill shortages into a national issue'.This statement seems to benignly suggest that there is a spreading contagion of nurse shortages across the UK, with all the implications for quality care that this entails.