The NHS's Ageing Nursing Workforce

A report released this morning by the Royal College of Nursing has revealed what it describes as a coming 'perfect storm' for the NHS nursing workforce. An 'unprecedented number of risk factors', including changes to student nurse funding, real term cuts to pay and an ageing workforce, threaten to throw the NHS into further turmoil. The Statista infographic below shows the change in the age of qualified nurses from 2006 to 2015. Over this period, there has been a 10.3 percentage point increase in nurses over the age of 44 - leaving almost half of the workforce ten years or fewer away from being eligible for early retirement.