More overseas nurses needed at Grantham, says trust

HEALTH chiefs who run Grantham Hospital say they must recruit more foreign nurses to stop a shortage on Lincolnshire’s wards – because too many British nurses do not want to work here.

There are not enough newly-qualified nurses who choose to stay and work in the county, health bosses say.

And, they claim, nurses from Greece, Portugal and Spain sometimes know more than their UK counterparts.

Around 40 international nurses have joined United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust since a recruitment drive in Greece in May this year.

It has upped numbers of foreign nurses in Lincolnshire’s NHS hospitals to 151, compared to the 1,161 British band five nurses here.

However, there are still 36 spaces across Lincoln County Hospital, Grantham and Boston Pilgrim Hospital that the trust urgently needs to fill, from 100 vacancies at the start of September.

Garry Marsh, deputy chief nurse at ULHT, said the trust pays a fee to an agency to find the foreign nurses – but said the money would be spent elsewhere if not.

He said: “What we have to remember is that if we don’t appoint foreign nurses, we will be paying that fee because we have to have agency nurses, bank nurses or nurses working overtime.

“In some of the countries we appoint from, their newly-qualified nurses have skill sets beyond UK newly-qualified nurses.”

His words come a year after the Echo revealed foreign nurses were being recruited to work in

Mr Marsh said national pressure for qualified and registered nurses following the Francis Report into NHS standards has caused the gap in nursing numbers locally. That report was issued after alarming death rates and practices were revealed at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

Mr Marsh insists Lincolnshire’s geography and transport links mean it is hard to attract them and keep them.

However, Mr Marsh said people often assume numbers of foreign staff are much greater – and rebuffed concerns that bringing them to the UK leaves shortages in their home countries.

He said: “What we have found, particularly in Greece and Italy, is we are not stripping their workforce.

“They have trained excessive numbers of nurses and the number qualifying far outstrips the number of vacancies available in Greece because of their economic climate.

“We are going overseas because actually we have suddenly had to do a piece of work to heighten registered nurse numbers after the Francis Report, and that actually the educators of the UK haven’t had enough time to train enough to close that gap.”

Source: Lincolnshire Echo