The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
MSP encourages health board to say G’day to Aussie nurses recruitment idea
NHS Tayside has said it plans to work alongside a northern neighbour on innovative solutions to staff shortages which could include an injection of Australian nurses.
Grampian Health Board sent a delegation down under in an effort to shore up its nursing register last year.
Almost 50 nurses are set to begin work across Grampian and Scottish Conservative MSP Bill Bowman believes Tayside could follow suit.
Hundreds more are in line to make the 10,000-mile trip to take up roles in Grampian, following a recruitment drive that took health chiefs to job fairs in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.
North East region MSP Mr Bowman said: “Apparently Western Australia has so many nurses that they can’t all get clinical experience.
“A generation of medical staff are looking for work and a place to employ their skills.
“This may not be a permanent move but I’d like to think there’s a place in NHS Tayside for enthusiastic nurses who may value experience, instead of incredibly expensive agency staff.”
Attending job fairs cost the struggling board more than £20,000 but the response has left it optimistic it will prove value for money.
As well as 49 nurses and midwives, there are another 114 at various stages of training, which they need to complete before they can be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
An NHS Tayside spokesperson said, “NHS Tayside has already commenced discussions with the other boards in the north region, including NHS Grampian, to progress our approach together to international nursing recruitment, so that we continue to attract the best talent to our services.” For the past month our television screens have been full of stories about the A and E crisis in our hospitals.
The sight of very sick, elderly patients having to wait for much longer than the targeted four hours to get the medical attention they need isn’t acceptable in this day and age.
Whilst the Scottish NHS’S handling of the situation has been markedly better than anywhere else in the UK, that is of little comfort to those stuck on a trolley for hours on end waiting to be treated.
The core problem is the lack of enough beds and staff to deal with the situation. This shortage has arisen for three reasons.
Firstly, the NHS has continually under-estimated the number of beds needed to meet its own targets, for both planned and emergency treatment.
Too often we have cut the number of hospital beds prematurely before the additional services needed to deal with patients in the community are up and running.
Secondly, the increased demand on A and E departments has been far higher than anyone predicted.
The huge increase in the number of elderly patients presenting with very complex clinical conditions is much higher than anticipated.
The number of patients using A and E as a substitute GP service has increased significantly.
The shortage of medical staff, exacerbated by the opposition of the BMA to recruiting and training more doctors, has made matters worse.
There is also a plausible argument that some of the NHS’S waiting time and other targets have skewed the allocation of resources in the wrong direction and at huge cost; thus increasing pressures on the system.
We need to address all of these issues.
Priorities include putting a stop to any further reduction in the number of hospital beds.
Significantly increasing the number of doctors and nurses we train is vital, as is ensuring that the rewards they get for their work and dedication are comparable to those available in other countries.
The third and most challenging reason for the winter A and E crises is that the UK is under-investing in the NHS. For example, Germany and France each invest over 11% of their GDP into health, whereas the UK invests only 9.7%.
This differential may not sound a lot but it is. If the UK level of investment in the NHS matched that of Germany and France the NHS in Scotland would have over £1.5 billion a year more to spend.