Nursing recruitment policy in UK criticised

Focus has once again fallen on the strategy of bringing overseas nurses into Britain with NHS bosses and health ministers referring to this strategy as a “get out of jail free” card. The government has a migration advisory committee, MAC, and it has recommended that up to 5,000 nurses from outside of the European Economic Area, EEA, be provided with visas for the next three years. The committee says that they have reluctantly made this recommendation to the home secretary, but they have made it nonetheless.

The chair of MAC, Professor David Metcalf, pointed out that there is no reason why nurses cannot be sourced from the UK. It was also Metcalf who referred to the “get out jail free” card. Metcalf went on to criticise the Department of Health for not anticipating the employment crisis in the NHS. Metcalf said that the decision to reduce the number of training place in England by close to 20% from 2009 to 2013 as being a major factor in the current issues.

Level of overseas nurses in UK not as high as figures from previous decade

In Britain, it is believed that there are around 630,000 qualified nurses working, and 500,000 of these nurses are employed by the NHS. Around 140,000 of the total nurses hail from outside of the UK. While there is current concern about the influx of nurses from outside the UK, the annual recruitment figure for nurses from overseas peaked in 2001/02. The figure at that period was 16,000 and until 2005/06, the figure stayed above the 10,000 level. There was a drop in the ten years that followed, with the 2009/10 figures reaching as low as 2,000 but there has been a return to previously high figures, with around 8,000 foreign nurses being brought into Britain, with the majority coming from outside the EEA.

In one aspect, there is too much focus on where the nurses hail from. The most important thing about a nurse should be whether they are good enough to do their job or not and only after that aspect has been resolved should there be a focus on where the nurse hails from. It is true to say that in ideal world and situation, there would be enough British nurses to meet the needs of the British population, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. There is more than can be done, and working closely alongside NHS framework recruitment agencies like Atlantis Medical would be a positive move, but there is a bigger issue, and problem regarding recruitment in the NHS and the use of foreign nurses is a solution, as opposed to a cause.

MAC has also raised the issue that a number of hospital trusts are actually paying migrant nurses less money, and that these nurses are being used to save money as opposed to solve a shortfall in employment. It has been claimed that some hospital trusts are paying £6,000 less for a migrant nurse than they are for a UK nurse.

When overtime is factored in, the difference may fall to close to £3,000 but there are still concerns about the pay-gap and the real reasons for turning to nurses from abroad.

27 June 2016 Author : 2XL Recruitment Solutions part of 2XL Media Solutions