A petition launched online on 24 November now has more than 114,000 signatures and must therefore be considered for a debate in parliament.
Any petition that gets more than 100,000 signatures must be considered for a debate, and as it has more than 10,000 signatures the government must issue a response to it online.
Of these, 114,166 signatures were from people in the UK, with the other signatures coming from people living as far away as Japan, Zimbabwe and Brazil, along with other European countries such as Spain and France.
The petition was started by student nurse Kat Webb, and reads “At the moment, student nurses do not pay tuition fees, and receive a means tested bursary during their training. We are required, by the NMC, to have done at least 4,600 hours whilst studying, at least half of which are in practice.
“Student nurses often work alongside our studies, like most students. But unlike most students, we work full time hours in placement for around half the year, and spend the rest of the time in lectures, without a summer holiday, or an Easter break, as well as completing our assignments. Taking away the NHS Bursary will force more student nurses into working 70 hour weeks, as many already do, it will compromise our studies and most of all, our patient care.”
This comes after George Osborne, in his spending review on Wednesday, said that there would be loans for trainee nurses instead of grants and that 10,000 new training places will be created.
