This year’s UCAS deadline is fast approaching. One area of particular interest will be student applications to healthcare and nursing, where the government is keen to see increases to meet targets set in the NHS Workforce Plan. These students will go on to support an ageing population, and will operate in a fast-changing but also uncertain environment. In London, our nursing schools are considering how best to support the plan’s ambitious targets to increase nursing student numbers across all specialisms, including a targeted 92 per cent increase in adult nursing trainees.
London has 35 NHS trusts, more than 20 nursing schools, and more than 22,000 nursing students, so the nursing sector in London is an essential part of any conversation about the future of the profession. The shortage of nurses is also particularly acute here. London has more vacant nursing positions than any other part of the UK and simultaneously, the largest population in need of medical care. Although there was a rise in nursing applications during the peak years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the most recent UCAS end-of-cycle data release shows a five per cent decrease in applications to healthcare subjects including nursing. At London Higher, through our Healthcare Education Group, we are focusing on how to reverse this trend.
If we want to increase the number of applications to nursing in London, we should start by thinking about who is already studying here. While London is a notably international study destination, its nursing students are largely from the UK. In 2021 (the most recent year for which full demographic data is available from HESA), 97 per cent of nursing students in London were domestic students. Of this domestic student population, a significant majority (67 per cent) were London residents studying in the city.
