Last media reports highlighted the problem of nurses coming to the UK to work for the NHS from poorer countries that face nursing shortages. This is an issue because when nurses leave countries that have already got labor shortages, health care in those countries will inevitably suffer.
Determined by the World Health Organization (WHO). over 50 countries where exporting nurses put their healthcare systems in danger. WHO recommends that international recruitment in these countries should only happen if managed very rigorously.
While we might not criticize any one who seeks a greater life for themselves and their family, nurses are sometimes trained at taxpayer expense to satisfy pressing health care needs of their countries.
Is there a greater way?
This isn’t a brand new trend
It is essential to see this phenomenon in its light historical context. Britain has been recruiting nurses from its former colonies because the Forties. Some of the primary Windrush passengers 75 years ago were nurses and midwives from Jamaica who were invited to work within the newly established NHS to satisfy staffing needs.
According to Nursing and Midwifery CouncilThe countries where the UK is recruiting probably the most nurses post-Brexit include India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Kenya and Nepal.
Around 91% of overseas nurses registered to practice within the UK in 2021-22 were from these seven countries. Four of those countries (Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Nepal) are on the WHO protected list.
Countries resembling the Philippines and India – where many of the UK’s overseas-trained nurses come from – have a “surplus” of nurses insofar as they train more nurses than they will employ, with the intention that these nurses work elsewhere. The Philippines particularly is economically depending on residents’ remittances including nurses.
However, each within the Philippines and particularly in India, the variety of nurses may be very low per person– in keeping with data from the World Bank. This is a fair greater problem in rural areas. Given this and the underdeveloped state of their health care systemsrecruiting nurses even from these countries isn’t an easy ethical proposition.
This isn’t a singular situation within the UK. Among OECD countries, the UK is comparable to New Zealand, Switzerland and Australia where no less than 20% nursing staff are trained elsewhere.
Even Japan, a rustic that has traditionally been wary of immigration, is now recruiting nurses Indonesia and the Philippines. This means the UK is competing with other wealthy countries for nurses and other medical experts.
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What is the reply?
The obvious long-term solution presented recently NHS Employment Plan, is to coach more nurses within the UK. However, it isn’t so simple as funding additional places at university for college kids who could study nursing. Student nurses need supervised practice as a part of their education and the NHS does this limited capability absorb students, especially given the pressure the system is under.
It takes no less than three years to coach a nurse, and more time is required before they will perform complex roles resembling a registered nurse. There can be a shortage of nursing lecturers around the globe (especially in United States).
Although there isn’t yet firm evidence of such a shortage within the UK, the nursing teaching workforce, just like the nursing workforce as an entire, is aging and lots of set for retirement in the approaching years.
In the short term, probably the most effective policy intervention shall be for the NHS to retain more of the nurses it already has. The easiest and quickest solution to achieve that is by increasing nurses’ pay and providing them with higher working conditions, including higher skilled development and training.
Our own research supports it. We ran a development program for post-career nurses, and participants talked about “feeling energized” due to this system.
The UK government has reached an agreement with Nepal AND India which aim to enable the UK to recruit healthcare staff from these countries, but without harming their healthcare systems. They currently provide a framework for developing a more detailed policy, but don’t contain specific recruitment targets.
Given global economic inequality and aging societies within the richer countries of the world, some movement of nurses from poorer to richer countries is inevitable, no less than within the short term.
However, there are measures that wealthier countries can take to oversee this process ethically, including: a robust commitment to the prevailing nursing workforce when it comes to pay, working conditions and development.