The shortfall of nurses trained in the UK is clear, say experts – and is driving a renewed focus on hiring from abroad as pandemic restrictions ease

Increasing the number of nurses in the NHS is a priority across the UK, and in England the government has a target of 50,000 more by 2025. When this election commitment was made in 2019, boosting student numbers, improving retention and developing new routes into the profession could all have played a role. But it is now ‘too late’ to use a scale-up in domestic preregistration education to meet the target, says University of Edinburgh visiting professor James Buchan.