500 midwives hired abroad to ease NHS staffing crisis
HUNDREDS of midwives are being recruited from overseas to boost the health service’s workforce.
Up to 500 are expected to take up posts after moving from countries such as Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Italy, India and the Philippines.
The new Maternity International Recruitment Programme over the next six months will bolster staff numbers at 80 NHS trusts.
Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, England’s chief midwifery officer, said: “Almost from the moment the NHS was set up, internationally educated midwives, such as the Windrush generation, have been an important part of the midwifery family.
Skills
“The NHS is developing a range of strategies to continually improve the care for women and babies, including developing solutions to grow the number of domestically trained midwives, with more international recruitment where each new recruit bring a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience.”
Maternity services on average deliver more than 1,500 babies every day, one every 54 seconds.
The new recruits will join more than 22,000 NHS midwives. They have all been registered in their home countries and will receive an induction to meet UK requirements.
The Royal College of Midwives has warned staff shortages are contributing to burnout, particularly after Covid pressures.
The NHS has also faced strong criticism over failures in maternity care at a number of trusts.
A review of Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust across two decades found 201 babies and nine mothers could have survived with better care.
NHS chiefs have allocated £4.5million in funding to support the recruitment scheme, which is part of a wider raft of improvements.
It builds on NHS England and NHS Improvement’s international nursing recruitment, which saw 21,000 nurses join the health service between September 2019 and March 2021.
Prof Dunkley-Bent added: “We want the NHS to be the safest place to give birth and these new international midwives will help us to do this, so I would like to express my gratitude and welcome them.”