Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:03 pm on 28 September 2016.
Yes, and I thought you made some really good points in your contribution, which I think could be easily wound into the inquiry. I have to say that I stop slightly short at the notion of paying a wage to all trainee nurses, because, then, do we pay a wage to trainee doctors and dentists and vets? I think we have to look at what we can do to support people in an equitable and fair way. And, we have to do what’s best for our nation and, at the moment, our critical shortage is in the NHS, in our workforce. So, as a nation, if we deploy more of our resources into attracting people, then I think that that’s what we need to have a look at.
I think we shouldn’t be shy either about trying to widen the access not just, as you so well put it, Rhun, for more mature students—perhaps people who are wanting to swap their jobs or people wanting to progress up a career pathway, perhaps they’ve been a healthcare assistant and now they’d like to go and be a nurse—but I think we can actually look at trying to poach people from very different professions that have some kind of tie-ins. I think we need to try and poach people from abroad to come into here, and people from England, from Scotland. There are lots of things we can do to try to make it far more attractive to come into Wales, to work in the medical profession and then, more importantly, to settle here, make Wales their home, take us on as their nation and actually help to build our country going forward. So, I think this is quite a complex area.
What I don’t think, Cabinet Secretary, is that any inquiry or review into how we might be able to support nurses and other allied professionals needs to be complicated. We’ve shown it already with the independent patient funding request inquiry. We can do something small, sharp, highly focused that’s got a very clear set of references, and then we want a very, very quick outcome. Why we need it to be a quick outcome is we need to have a look at what effect it might have with the Diamond review, as Rhun mentioned, and what effect it would have on Donaldson. I think the Donaldson element is very important, because I’d like to finish by making one comment: how many times do we take students—schoolchildren—out of their schools and take them into a hospital or into a general practice to try to encourage them into these medical professions? Not actually that often. Those are the kinds of things that we could do: a short, sharp review to look at how we can make it more attractive; how we can support and put in place good packages; how we can put in place good mentoring services and perhaps even have key clusters around Wales that act as training focal points, so that people don’t have to try and fight to find their placement; and, how we can support them financially and, above all, attract more people from all walks of life into our healthcare professions, because we need them, and we need them desperately.