Easier language tests for foreign nurses to ease staff shortages

LANGUAGE tests for foreign nurses and midwives could be made easier to tackle a severe NHS staffing shortage.

The threshold for passing an English language test is to be lowered under proposals by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

The regulator said it is planning to change the requirements after some were ‘just missing out’. The changes would ‘increase flexibility’ in a time of ‘significant pressure’ on staffing numbers, the NMC said.

Most foreign staff make several attempts to pass the tests, taking between eight months and a year to finally get through. Only around 50 per cent are ultimately successful.

With the NHS short of 42,000 nurses and midwives in England alone, bosses are desperate to make it easier for foreign staff to work here.

The plan, to be considered at a meeting of the NMC council next week, involves lowering the threshold for the International English Language Test System (IELTS) – one of two tests permitted by the NMC as a proof of competence. Currently nurses and midwives need a score of seven to pass, on a nine-point scale. The NMC wants to lower the pass to 6.5 in the writing part of the test – although staff would still need level seven in reading, listening and speaking.

Someone with a score of seven is described as a ‘good user’ of English who is ‘generally able to handle complex language well’ but with ‘occasional inaccuracies, inappropriate usage and misunderstandings in some situations’.

A score of six indicates someone is a ‘competent user’.

Joyce Robins of pressure group Patient Concern, said: ‘I don’t think dumbing down critical tests is a good idea. Patients and nurses need to understand each other, or mistakes will be made.’

The importance of fluency in English was exposed by the 2008 death of David Gray, 70, at the hands of German GP Daniel Ubani. He had not faced any checks on his competence or English and gave the pensioner Cambridgeshire ten times the safe dose of diamorphine.