SCHOOL PUPILS are being targeted in a bid to boost the nursing workforce, Tayside health bosses heard yesterday, writes Marjory Inglis, health reporter.

NHS Tayside’s director of nursing Professor Liz Wilson told colleagues the effort is being concentrated on secondary pupils.

An earlier plan to send nurses in uniform into class rooms to talk to children as young as nine has been deserted, after educational advisers said that would be “inappropriate.”

Prof Wilson, addressing members of NHS Tayside’s staff governance committee meeting in King’s Cross Hospital, Dundee, said primary pupils were being involved in an art project.

Fourteen months ago Peter Bates, the former chairman of NHS Tayside, called for children as young as nine to be targeted for a career in nursing.

Then, as now, senior executives at the health board were concerned about the population shift that will see the baby boomers retiring at the same time as the number of teenagers leaving school and entering the workforce is shrinking.

Health bosses agreed they would have to work at attracting people into healthcare professions in a competitive jobs market.

Mr Bates did not think his colleagues should wait until the secondary school years when pupils traditionally considered their options for future employment, but should hook them at primary school.

But in her address yesterday, titled Inspiring Young People To Become Nurses, Professor Wilson said classroom talks for primary pupils had been ruled out by educational advisors.

“They didn’t feel people coming in and talking to pupils was appropriate,” said Prof Wilson.

“Their advice was try an arts project and we are currently doing that in primary schools.”

She pointed out that work would be very difficult to evaluate as, with such young pupils, it would take a long time to discover whether they did become nurses.

A national initiative aimed at attracting people in to the healthcare workforce was not “engaging” with primary school pupils because there was “not a strong evidence base that is effective.”

Professor Wilson said frontline nurses in uniform from Tayside were attending careers conventions locally and nationally and a lot of work was being done with secondary school pupils to promote “positive images” of nursing.

She highlighted that recruitment was not just about young people.

Around 440 people were recruited to Dundee University’s undergraduate nursing courses every year and many were mature students.

“In the last group I saw, of about 70 nursing students, I would say 40% of them were over 40 years old,” said Prof Wilson.

NHS Tayside was also working with the university to address the problem of people leaving their nursing courses early.

Over 100 students a year drop out of Dundee University nursing courses.

Prof Wilson said exit interviews were conducted and attempts made to learn from these and improve the support available to students to try and reduce the drop out rates.

She said it was clear from these exit interviews that some people had no idea what nursing would really be like and now when people were being interviewed for places on nursing courses, attempts were being made to give prospective students a clear idea of what to expect.