the future challenge for the nhs is to be able to maintain the motivation of its workforce and to contain and reverse the drain of professionals the low number of nurses however is not likely to grow in the near future while the number of medical graduates has increased consistently over time the number of nurse graduates has been decreasing since in particular health gains and increased activity in the nhs were obtained without extra resources indicating both an improvement in value for money as well as the existence of large inefficiencies in the system