A new £107m funding package for healthcare professionals in Wales will see the number of nurse training places increase by 10% in 2018.
The funds will add a further 161 nurse training places across Wales, bringing the total to 1,911, and will also see additional training places for health visitors created.
The 10% rise for 2018 follows a 13% increase in 2017 and a 10% in 2016.
Of that £107m, around £2m per year will be used to support a pilot of neighbourhood nursing care, with £1.4m going towards the education and training programmes for district nurses.
Welsh health secretary Vaughan Gething said the investment was important to ‘secure the long-term future of the health service’.
He said: ‘The austerity policy pursued by the UK Government has significantly impacted our budget and in those circumstances training is often one of the first casualties. But this is a short-sighted approach. Instead we are actually increasing investment in training, despite the budget cuts, in order to secure the long-term future of the health service.’
