Overseas NHS recruitment 'not sustainable' - MP

It is "not sustainable" for the UK to continue looking abroad for NHS staff, an MP and former nurse has warned.

Almost one in five NHS workers in the Midlands have been recruited from abroad, according to workforce data from NHS England.

The rate has almost doubled nationally since 2009, the BBC found, with approximately 42% of doctors being non-British, as are 25% of nurses and healthcare visitors, 3% of managers and 2% of senior managers.

Labour MP for Erdington Paulette Hamilton said: "We can't take nurses from abroad in the same number any more because a lot of countries can't spare them."

The growth of recruitment programmes over the past decade has come amid a series of vacancies at NHS trusts, particularly in nursing, which continues to be on the list of occupations facing ongoing shortages.

Jerico Mentil, 35, arrived in the UK in late 2016, after being recruited as a nurse from the Philippines.

He began working at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton, where he continues to work in the emergency department and on a project to digitise patient records.

"It is a big pedestal to be able to say you worked abroad – but to be able to work in the NHS in the UK was an even higher pedestal. It was prestigious.

"It was simpler nine years ago when we came, nowadays when you move to the UK you are faced with a lot more challenges for example the economic crisis, changes in house prices, it's harder to adapt."

Between 2021 and 2023, the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust led the biggest overseas recruitment programme seen in the Midlands in recent years, recruiting about 1,500 nurses to work in the Black Country and west Birmingham.

That has now ended as posts have been filled, but it saw nurses arrive from countries including the Philippines, South Africa, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal and India.

"There was a national shortage of nurses so our international recruitment was pivotal in helping us fill vacancies and it's also provided us with an opportunity to diversify the workforce," Leanne Walford, a senior matron at the trust, said.

"A lot of our intake have a wealth of knowledge and experience".

"It's about making sure that everything is planned so it's not just about the recruitment of the individual it's about respecting the transition and the challenges of packing up your whole life and moving to a different country."

That can also mean ongoing support for staff.

The trust has also maintained links with universities in the West Midlands to recruit graduate nurses, but figures from UCAS suggest the number of students nationally applying to study nursing is at a record low.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said a collapse in numbers of 35% in England and 34% across the UK was a "hammer blow for the government's planned NHS reforms".

Last September, England's former chief nurse Dame Ruth May criticised a "catastrophic decision", in 2015, to replace the grant or bursary paid to student midwives and nurses with loans.

It led to reduction of about 5,700 trainees in England by 2020, Dame Ruth said, which "would have made a difference" in the pandemic.

The RCN has called on the government to provide better financial backing for student nurses.

Hamilton, who worked as a district nurse in Birmingham and in Parliament is a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, said: "The way things have been done over the past few years, we've had this austerity crisis where people have not been growing their own – training our own nurses.

"We've been to other parts of the world looking for people to do the job for us," she said, "but that is not sustainable."

"I went into my nursing life without being in debt, we have to offer that to the new generation of nurses."

She said the government had been looking at the situation with Health Secretary Wes Streeting stating he wanted to train 5,000 more health visitors and 8,500 mental health nurses.

"He wants to get general nurses into training," Hamilton added.

"It's not that we haven't got a willingness, but for that to become a reality we have to look at the way that training is offered in this country."

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