Madam,

Everyone knows that the NHS in Wales is hemorrhaging nursing staff, and the public may also know that there are thousands of qualified nurses that are currently unregistered for whatever reason, e.g. bringing up children or caring for a family member.

It may be less well known that there is also a no-tuition-fees ‘Return to Practice’ university course available which these qualified nurses could take in order to make them again available to practice in the NHS.

There is also a huge barrier: NHS Wales expects these nurses to do the 22.5 hours a week for six months required for free! There is a £1,000 bursary, paid in three installments, which start after you have done a few weeks of the course, but of course that won’t go far. So it is suggested that the student nurses, taking this course, work as health care support workers, within the NHS Wales, to earn money on which to live.

It seems that very few people realise that HCSWs, the staff that used to be called auxiliary nurses and were unqualified, have to do training towards NVQs and Continuous Professional Development these days; as they now perform most of the tasks that the state-enrolled nurses used to, but get paid around £9 per hour; less than local delivery drivers for shops.

The maths: 22.5 hours unpaid, plus 17.5 hours per week at £9 per hour = £157.50 per 40-hour week or £708 per month (4.5 weeks) = £3.93 per hour. If you include the £1,000 bursary the monthly income becomes £874 and the hourly rate goes up to £4.86 per hour.

Can anyone believe that? NHS Wales wishes to pay £4.86 per hour for experienced, qualified nurses who are refreshing professional skills. That’s a total of 1,080 working hours to earn £5,248 over the six months. To put this into context, a 16-year-old can earn £4.50 per hour for washing up in a café.

Factor in travelling up to 60 miles each day whilst attending the course and working shifts in Carmarthen and it is no wonder the NHS in Wales is short-staffed. They won’t pay qualified and experienced nurses whilst they refresh their skills, however NHS Wales is willing to pay ‘agency nurses’ around £40 per hour, a total of £81,000 per annum, plus the fees the agencies charge.

NHS Wales could encourage nurses ‘back to practice’ by offering to pay local, unregistered nurses £9 per hour, the rate for a HCSW, whilst on the course. It would cost NHS Wales only £5,468 to refresh a qualified nurse’s training. This would make working as a HCSW, whilst on the course, an option rather than a necessity. That nurse could then work for the NHS in Wales for a starting salary of around £22,128 per annum; for a band 5 registered nurse.

Thus annual savings of £58,872 per annum per registered nurse could be made by spending £5,468 to ‘refresh’ an unregistered nurse. This figure does not include the savings made on the fees charged per nurse by the agencies.

In my opinion, it’s complete madness that NHS Wales doesn’t seem to have done the maths!

Yours etc,

Name and address supplied.

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