The number of nursing and midwifery professionals in the north has risen to a record high in the last year, new figures have revealed.
According to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), an increase of 3.7% has seen the number of registered professionals reach a high of 28,725, almost 4,000 more than five years ago.
A total of 1,380 people joined the register for the first in the last year, up almost 13% on the previous year.
The majority of joiners (1,121) were educated in the UK, and this number continues to increase year on year. It is 9.8% higher than last year and and 41.2% higher five years ago.
The number of internationally educated professionals has also seen an increase and is 28% higher than last year and four times higher than five years ago.
In March the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) criticised plans to not reverse cuts to nursing student places in the north.
Rita Devlin, Executive Director RCN Northern Ireland, said the department was repeating past mistakes that created a workforce crisis in nursing.
She warned that previous cuts between 2010-15 had created a nursing workforce crisis “that we have never recovered from,” she said repeating the mistakes of the past was “frankly outrageous”.
Ms Devlin added that the health service was now over-reliant on agency staff and internationally educated nurses who are less likely to stay for longer periods of time as there is already a worldwide shortage of nurses, and that storing up expensive problems for the future was not the way to stabilise the health budget.
Miles Wallace, lead director for Northern Ireland at the NMC, said: “Nursing and midwifery professionals make a profound difference to health and social care every day, positively impacting the people they care for and those around them. That’s why I’m delighted that the number of professionals in Northern Ireland is now higher than ever.
“We are committed to working with our partners across the sector to retain these skilled, knowledgeable and valued professionals and provide them with the support they need to carry out their essential roles.
“We have seen an impressive 1,900 professionals in Northern Ireland, both UK and internationally educated, join the register in the last 12 months – a record compared to previous years. We welcome the vital skills and knowledge these joiners bring to the professions, and the ever-growing diversity this means for the register.”
