Nursing Degree Requirement on the Horizon for the UK?

The British government recently announced that by 2013, the minimum education for nurses will be raised from diploma to degree level, which means three or four years of post-secondary education and training.
The Royal College of Nursing is quoted as calling this "an important and historic development", while the UK Department of Health feels the additional education will better equip nurses leading to higher quality patient care. However the move is not without controversy due to the already critical shortage of nurses.

"An increasingly high percentage of nurses working in the NHS are foreign nationals, and raising the bar at entry point would have to be communicated clearly and rolled out internationally as the NHS is staffed by an international resource pool."

As reported in Nursing In Practice, Nov 17, 2009.