Nurses' college cancels course

MORE than 80 people waiting to begin a nursing career in April at one of the country's most prestigious colleges have been told that the course has been cancelled.

The Nightingale and Guy's College of Health in London has offered no alternative to the 87 successful candidates - some of whom have waited more than a year for a place. The decision appears to be financial, complicated by the Tomlinson report on the future of London hospitals and plans to modernise nurse training. One father whose daughter was offered a place six months ago said: 'There seems to be no legal protection and no moral obligation to fulfil a promise.'

The course was not yet part of Project 2000, the new nurse training programme due to be in place by the end of the decade. This takes trainees off the wards and puts them in the classroom, and the Government gives the hospitals up to 60 per cent of nurse costs to cover the change; last year it cost pounds 98m.

The college was formed in 1991 when the Guy's and St Thomas's schools of nursing combined. The Tomlinson proposals, due to go to the Cabinet this week, recommend the merger of the hospitals and the Department of Health has withheld Project 2000 start-up money until this question is settled.

Maureen Theobold, the director of the college, said that it was in the hands of the hospitals, which decided how many nurses were needed: 'At their request we have cancelled all intakes until Project 2000 can start. This is unlikely this year.'

Liz Winder, director of quality and nursing at St Thomas's Hospital NHS Trust, said: 'It would not be fair to continue to offer an old course that would not be as good as the new one. We can't start the (new) syllabus unless we get the money.'

A spokesman for the Guy's and Lewisham NHS Trust said the decision had been made jointly between the hospitals' directors of nursing and the college.

New style health service managers undervalue nurses, Christine Hancock, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said yesterday. At the launch of a campaign to resist cuts and halt the trend to replace skilled nurses with care assistants, she said that 8,500 nursing jobs had disappeared in the two years to 1991 while 18,000 administrative posts had been created.

John Humphries, the senior labour relations officer, said there had been significant reductions in patient services and a 5.2 per cent reduction in nursing employment in 1992, and warned that worse could follow.

Ms Hancock said: 'If units and trusts want to survive to win contracts for quality patient care then the key factor must be the provision of qualified staff.' The recent cuts in services, jobs and nurse training are despite a major government recruitment campaign in 1989 designed to attract trained staff back and to harness the diminishing number of school leavers who have traditionally provided the pool of new trainees. But newly trained nurses can no longer expect jobs in the hospitals to which they have been attached, and hospitals struggle with their budgets in the reorganised health service.