Data published by NHS Digital yesterday shows that just under 33,500 nurses left the service in 2016-17 – 3,000 more than joined and 20% higher than the number who quit in 2012-13.
The worrying figures come amid an ongoing winter crisis fuelled by rising demand, coupled with staff and bed shortages.
The data shows more nurses have left the NHS in England than have joined for the past three years, with the deficit highest last year. In each of those three years, the number quitting has been 10% of the total.
Janet Davies, head of the Royal College of Nursing, told the BBC, which initially requested the figures, that they were of great concern. “The government must lift the NHS out of this dangerous and downward spiral,” she said.
“We are haemorrhaging nurses at precisely the time when demand has never been higher. The next generation of British nurses aren’t coming through just as the most experienced nurses are becoming demoralised and leaving.”
Although 6,976 (21%) of the nurses who left in the year to September 2017 were 55 or over (the age at which nurses can start retiring on a full pension), just over half (17,207) were under 40.
The figures suggest Brexit may be having an impact, with more nurses from the EU leaving than joining in recent years. Last year, 3,985 EU (excluding the UK) nurses left, compared with 2,791 who joined. By contrast, in the last full year before the 2016 referendum (2014-15), 2,416 nurses quit the NHS, while 5,977 joined.
Hospital bosses have called for the 62,000 EU workers in the NHS, who represent 5.6% of the total workforce, to be given reassurance about their status post-Brexit.
But it is not just EU nurses who are leaving. Davies said low pay and the pressures of the job must be addressed if retention were to be improved.
Last week, senior doctors wrote to Theresa May, the prime minister, warning that patients were dying in hospital corridors during the winter crisis because the NHS was so underfunded and short-staffed that it could not cope.
The percentage of patients being treated within four hours at hospital-based A&E units in England fell to its lowest-ever level (77.3%) last month.
A department of health and social care spokesperson said there had been a rise of 11,700 nurses on wards since May 2010, and an additional 5,000 training places would be available from this year.
