Just 3 out of 118 Filipino nurses passed English test to work in UK
‘It would solve our problem’
HOSPITAL managers want English requirements for foreign nurses to be relaxed after only three out of 118 Filipino applicants passed language tests. Bosses at Walsall Manor Hospital in the West Midlands said the nurses would have been perfectly competent at the jobs – yet the exams were too tough.
They are now lobbying the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the professional watchdog, to ease the standards to enable them to recruit more nurses. The NMC is already under pressure to change the tests for EU nurses after they were partly blamed for a 96 per cent drop in applicants in less than a year
But hospital managers say the same tough exams are preventing them from hiring nurses from outside Europe, notably the Philippines.
The NHS is facing a severe nursing shortage and campaigners say up to one in nine posts are vacant – equivalent to 40,000 nurses. Hospitals are becoming increasingly reliant on nurses from overseas and more recently from within the EU, particularly Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy.
But figures last month showed the number of European nurses registering to work in the UK had fallen by 96 per cent in the space of nine months.
Experts said this was partly due to the introduction of tougher English tests in January last year that require candidates to understand complicated medical articles. The NMC is currently considering whether to lower the standards for EU nurses but it is now facing calls to do the same for applicants from outside Europe. Walsall Healthcare Trust is short of 100 nurses and managers have flown twice to the Philippines in the past year to attract candidates.
Although 118 Filipino nurses provisionally accepted posts, just three passed the English language tests set by the NMC.
In September, the neighbouring Royal Wolverhampton Trust offered jobs to 220 Filipino nurses but only eight passed the exam.
Rachel Overfield, the director of nursing at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Walsall Manor, said the language test was tougher than anywhere else in the world.
She said: ‘We have offered posts to in excess of 100 nurses there. Three have arrived.
‘I am really confident the ones we have offered posts to are capable of doing that job but we cannot get them in because of the rules from the NMC and immigration folks.
‘All we can do is to lobby at a national level. If we could get those nurses in it would solve our problem overnight.’
Jackie Smith, NMC chief executive and registrar, said: ‘Patient safety is always our priority. The professional code for nurses and midwives requires them to have the necessary command of English in order to practise safely.
‘It is essential that patients and the public are confident that nurses and midwives are able to understand them and other professional colleagues.
‘We do not believe it is in the interests of public safety to lower the standard of English competence required without clear evidence. While we are aware of some concerns, we do not currently have any hard evidence on which to base a change.’