European nurses don’t want to work for NHS, report suggests — Brexit-induced migratory hurdles and poor wages have made Britain an unattractive destination
European nurses don’t want to work for NHS, report suggests — Brexit-induced migratory hurdles and poor wages have made Britain an unattractive destination
9 comments
> I think in the long term, what we need is to be generating and keeping staff domestically.
This should be the aim. Better pay and conditions plus student loan forgiveness / reimbursement after 5 or 10 years FTE in the NHS.
Well the obvious solution is to keep their working conditions shitty and import cheaper labor from abroad who is willing to put up with our bullshit. Want your working conditions improved? Shut up or we will get someone from the third world who will be thankful to live in Europe and do your work.
Stephen Roth, 19 December 2022, CityA.M.
Excerpt:
>The number of EU and EFTA nurses in the UK has decreased by 28 per cent from 38,992 in September 2016 to 28,007 in September 2021, forcing the NHS to recruit from ‘red list’ countries to meet staff shortages, a report from Nuffield Trust suggests.
>“Before the EU referendum, the UK heavily relied on EU staff. Now we can’t get the same people due to free movement restrictions,” Mark Dayan, Brexit programme leader and author of the paper told CityAM.
>With fewer European nurses entering the UK, the NHS has bolstered its ranks with professionals from the ‘rest of the world’ increasing by 45 per cent, from 67,055 to 97,731 during the same period.
>
>However, this new entourage is heavily made up of workers from ‘red list’ countries, lower and middle-income nations are dealing with a brain drain and shortages themselves.
>“We are effectively recruiting from some quite poor countries which are on the World Health Organization’s red list, they are staff that we shouldn’t recruit”, Dayan said.
>Despite the growth in international assistance, NHS digital estimated that as of June there were 46,828 nursing vacancies in England alone, with the UK’s nurse-to-patient standing at 8.7 nurses per 1,000 patients – similar to that of Russia and Lithuania.
>“We cannot meet staff shortages by filling roles this way. Many particular medical specialities like anaesthetics and cardiothoracic surgery relied on EU staff”, Dayan adds.
Further reading:
*Health and Brexit: six years on*, 19 December 2022, https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/research/health-and-brexit-six-years-on
Easy fix , import them from outside of Europe ..surely it will fix the problem .
Wow, who knew that leaving the European market meant you left the European market
Insert bicycle stick meme here
Imagine thinking people wanted to move from Eastern Europe to the UK just to be even poorer.
I don’t think poor wages are really the problem here, since UK nurses are [some of the best paid in Europe](https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/12/15/nurses-salaries-which-countries-pay-the-most-and-the-least-in-europe).
It’s just, why bother with all the VISA headaches if you can just move to Germany or the Netherlands?
Meanwhile, nurse shortages could drive wages up and make the UK more attractive for non-EU immigrants, especially those who speak English.
They never did anyway because pay was as good if not better in countries like France and Germany. Most of the foreign nurses in the NHS are from Asia and Africa.