The University of Gloucestershire will offer nursing degrees from 2017, in a bid to combat local shortages of nurses. It is predicted that the county will need around 450 new nurses each year to meet rising demand.
‘The national shortage of key healthcare professionals has been well documented,’ said Maggie Arnold, director of nursing at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. ‘This development has the potential to help address some of these issues. It also demonstrates our continued commitment to high quality patient care.’
The BSc degrees will be provided in conjunction with Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, 2gether NHS Foundation Trust, Gloucestershire Care Services NHS Trust and the NHS Gloucestershire CCG. A spokesperson for the University of Gloucestershire told Independent Nurse that the courses are suitable for potential nurses looking to go into both primary and acute care.
‘We already work closely with NHS Trusts in Gloucestershire,’ said Stephen Marston, vice-chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire. ‘By working in partnership with them, we can develop a new nursing degree that will provide the county’s health service with new, much needed nurses, while also providing new opportunities for local people to train to become nurses.’
The university already provides training for registered nurses, with qualifications approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council in non-medical prescribing and returning to practice. It also offers a higher education apprenticeship programme in Healthcare Assistant Practitioner. However, the new degrees are the university’s first basic training for aspiring nurses.