NHS wants 100,000 nurses from abroad
Desperate drive comes amid ‘urgent’ staffing crisis
HEALTH chiefs are set to poach tens of thousands of nurses from overseas in a desperate bid to solve the chronic NHS staffing crisis.
A recruitment masterplan leaked yesterday outlines plans to recruit 5,000 foreign nurses every year until 2040.
Many will come from poorer countries such as the Philippines and India. Ireland and Australia will also be targets.
The interim report from Baroness Dido Harding, chairwoman of NHS Improvement, says “shortages in nursing are the biggest, most urgent” NHS issue.
But it admits there is little hope of filling the more than 40,000 nursing vacancies for at least five years.
It comes after Tory austerity sparked a nursing exodus, with new data from the Nursing and Midwifery Council showing a third of those quitting cited “stress”. Dame Donna Kinnair, chief of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Politicians should be alarmed by the finding almost one in three quit nursing because of intolerable pressure. They have abused the goodwill of nurses for too long and that dam is starting to burst.”
In 2018 The Mirror revealed 159,134 nurses left in the previous five years.
Policies such as scrapping training bursaries have helped choke off the supply of home-grown recruits.
Ms Kinnair added: “The UK needs a strategy for the domestic workforce to recruit, train and retain a new generation of nurses.”
The NHS employs 1.3million staff, but has 100,000 unfilled posts overall.
The overseas drive will be one of the biggest since the Windrush generation arrived from the Caribbean after the NHS was founded 70 years ago. Baroness Harding’s report said there was a need to act “rapidly”. Despite also proposing to add and retain more British nurses, it estimates the shortfall will still be 38,800 by 2024. Without action it could hit 68,500. Questioned about the leak in Parliament yesterday, Health Minister Stephen Hammond replied: “The NHS has always recruited nurses internationally, and there are no plans to change that.” Some 1,600 foreign nurses joined the NHS last year.
But developing countries’ own medical services suffer when wealthy nations target the best trainees. In India there is only one government doctor per 10,189 people. The World Health Organisation recommends one for every 1,000. Yesterday the NMC revealed 30% of those who leave nursing do so due to “stress” and “poor mental health” with 19% blaming staffing levels.
One said: “I worked in the NHS for a brief time but I found the responsibility, workload and stress was too great.”
It also found the number of nurses, midwives and nursing associates registered in England rose from 690,000 to 698,000 in the last financial year.
But Ms Kinnair added: “The modest increases are not of the scale or kind needed to meet demand.”
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “It’s excellent news to see more nurses and midwives are joining our brilliant NHS, and we value each and every one.”
Almost one in three quit nursing due to intolerable pressure
DONNA KINNAIR ROYAL COLLEGE OF NURSING