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HEE pledges £15m to expand nursing placements

HEE pledges £15m to expand nursing placements

HEE announced this week that it will invest an additional £15m to expand the number of clinical placements for nursing, midwifery, and all other allied health professional students.

The training and education body said £8.2m would go towards an additional 7,000 nursing and midwifery clinical placements, while a further £5.8m would fund an extra 3,800 allied health profession placements.

The funding has been awarded to hospital trusts, primary care providers and some training hubs across the country, with an extra £1m invested in sustainable technologies.

HEE interim chief executive Professor Wendy Reid said it is ‘vital’ that new placement networks ‘make more use of primary care settings’.

She continued: ‘These young people are the future NHS workforce and we are committed to making sure there are career paths for them all.’

The extra cash represents a 50% increase on the money pledged in July and has been ‘targeted to support the welcome expansion across all health professions undergraduate programmes this September,’ said HEE.

It added that the Department for Education would be making additional funds available to support increasing capacity in nursing, medicine, dentistry and other health disciplines, and that providers will be consulted about its distribution shortly.

HEE chief nurse Mark Radford said: ‘These additional placements will expand the pipeline of our future workforce, meaning more healthcare professionals across the health and social care system.

‘We will be working directly with Universities, the NHS and other system providers to ensure the placements are provided in those areas of most need across the country.’

The move follows a rise in the number of students applying to nursing courses across the UK, although unions have warned a much larger increase is needed to reach the Government’s target of 50,000 more nurses in the NHS in England by 2023.

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