Nurses must be able to speak English

I WAS utterly appalled to hear that the Nursing and Midwifery Council is considering making the English tests that foreign nurses have to sit easier.

This is in response to senior NHS managers who say that too many nurses are being turned away because of poor English, and that hospitals are struggling to fill gaps.

This is complete madness. Nurses are the most vital professionals as far as patients are concerned. They’re there, day in, day out, in a way that doctors rarely are. The ability to communicate with their patients is fundamental to their work.

Making the tests easier will be a disaster for patient care and put lives at risk. If anything, I’d say the tests should be made tougher, because too often I’ve come across nurses whose language skills aren’t up to scratch and who struggle to understand — and be understood — by patients.

Their communication skills are wanting and I am concerned about their knowledge and understanding. I know that many nurses themselves despair at what they see.

We are indebted to the overseas nurses who come here to work in the NHS, but there must be basic requirements when dealing with patients — and a good command of English is not an unreasonable expectation.

The recruitment crisis in nursing has been going on for some time and there are many factors contributing to it. But the situation is about to be made even worse, because this year the Government scrapped the bursaries of up to £4,000 a year that trainee nurses receive and introduced fees — meaning that from this year they will have to take on vast amounts of debt. It’s going to be a disaster.

Faced with tens of thousands of pounds of debt, who would be a nurse?

We must reinstate the grant and halt the introduction of tuition fees for those in training. It’s a small gesture, but it sends a clear message that we value nurses. Simply making it easier for nurses with poor English to come here to work undermines the profession and risks the welfare of patients.