Edinburgh Napier University

  Background
Evidence-informed recruitment and retention strategies are required to ensure the nursing workforce has sufficient capacity and capability to deliver care to Scotland’s population. Current demographic and disease trends mean that people in Scotland are living longer with increasingly complex co-morbid conditions. One key challenge to sustainability is the ageing nursing workforce. Currently around a third of nurses are likely to retire in the next 10 years. Given these workforce changes it is likely more nurses will be required in future if current care standards are to be maintained. Recent scandals have raised the dangers of inadequate staffing levels, most notably at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Recent evidence suggests that higher proportions of qualified staff are associated with lower mortality. Policymakers require reliable workforce data to determine the size of the nursing establishment, the number of student nurses to train, and investment in interventions to support retention and return to practice. However, little is known about the career trajectories of the nursing workforce – especially among those who leave the NHS - to support this policy process.

Aim
To determine the career trajectories of nurses in Scotland over the 10 year period 2001 and 2010.