Nurses will be offered faster payment of expenses, more training in the community, and better food in hospitals under new plans to improve working conditions.
Sir Keir Starmer will unveil the plans on Thursday as part of the Government’s 10-year Health Plan.
Writing for The i Paper, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the measures will also include “cutting red tape for nurses so they can start on wards as soon as possible after finishing training”.
This, he said, would end “the ridiculous situation where thousands of students wait months after qualifying to get on the wards”.
He added that nursing staff would be given training on the latest tech so they can have more time to treat patients as part of the shift in the NHS from analogue to digital.
Labour’s 10-year Health Plan, which has been months in the making, will set out wide-ranging reforms across the NHS that ministers hope will cut waiting times in hospitals and allow more patients to be seen in their local community.
It is hoped that treating patients in community settings will help to remove pressure on NHS services by keeping more people out of overstretched hospitals.
Streeting said the Government would work with employers and unions to ensure staff have access to nutritious food and drink, and are better protected from violence, racism and sexual harassment.
NHS workers and unions have long highlighted the dire state of the catering on offer in hospitals, and Streeting claims his new plan will help to elevate standards.
In addition, from next year student nurses will be paid their expenses faster, he said, so they will not have to wait months to get reimbursed for things like bus fares.
Training will take place in communities as well as hospitals, giving student nurses experience of neighbourhood health, and on the latest tech innovations in healthcare.
Labour has already raised the starting salaries for nurses to over £30,000.
Questions over delivering the plan
But the health plan comes against the backdrop of the decision to axe NHS England, which will cut bureaucracy in the long run, but insiders fear will make it harder to deliver the reforms.
square POLITICS Streeting: Nurses gave me strength when I had cancer, now it's time I helped them
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There are also likely to be questions over how quickly the improved conditions for nurses can be delivered to the front line.
And the Government already faces the risk of further industrial disputes with healthcare unions, including the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), over pay.
In his article for The i Paper Streeting, who was treated for kidney cancer four years ago, wrote: “I know the nurses by my side during my own cancer journey didn’t just help me get better, they brought me emotional strength and comfort.
“But we all know that nurses haven’t had the working conditions they deserve for too long.”
In May 2021, Streeting revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer, saying it had come as an “enormous shock”. But, because it had been found early, his prognosis was good, even though he needed surgery to remove one of his kidneys. On 27 July, 2021, he announced he had been declared cancer-free.
Wes Streeting meeting student midwives and nurses at the University of Chester in 2022 (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty)Warning from union chief
On Sunday, RCN general secretary Nicola Ranger urged ministers to put nursing at the heart of the 10-year Health Plan.
Ranger also warned that measures in the Health Plan to tie Government investment to the performance of NHS trusts risked creating perverse incentives.
She added: “We would like to see that reform focus on the largest professional group in the NHS, which is nurses who got the lowest public sector pay award this year and have done for decades.
“We expect to be valued to be completely understood and invested in.”
Ranger highlighted recent polling which showed that 75 per cent of the public believed nurses should be paid more, while 66 per cent said the Government did not value nursing enough.
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