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There are nursing shortages across the UK because of cuts in nurse training budgets – and many experienced nurses are now reaching retirement age.

The Nursing Times recently questioned 105 hospital trusts about nurse recruitment and found that 40 had actively recruited nursing staff from abroad in the last year – and a further 41 trusts planned to recruit nurses from abroad within a year.

A Royal College of Nursing (RCN) report has also estimated that one in 20 nursing positions is left vacant in the UK. A total of 1,360 nurses have been recruited from Spain, Portugal and the Philippines to plug gaps in nursing in the NHS.

Nursing posts such as midwifery and health visiting are also suffering shortages.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has pledged to recruit a further 3,700 nurses by 2014.

Earlier in November, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust announced it had recruited 20 trained nurses from Spain to fill staff shortages.

Regional director of the Royal College of Nursing in the West Midlands Paul Vaughan said:

“This situation is predominantly a by-product of the ‘boom and bust’ nature of workforce planning in the NHS.

“When finances are tight, nurse numbers are among the first things to be cut – but with demand going up and care quality rightly under ever-increasing scrutiny, trusts are now finding they don’t have the number of nurses they need to deliver the service expected of them.

“Our view is recruiting from overseas is not a sustainable long-term solution – but it’s a reasonable and pragmatic step, if it means vacancies are filled and wards are fully staffed: we’d rather see that than staffing shortages that might put patient care at risk.”

New Labour tried to introduce a policy of not recruiting nurses from developing countries in case UK nurse recruitment policies caused shortages in developing countries. However, much of the NHS is staffed with trained staff from overseas – and many Filipinos who come to live in the UK do so to take up positions in the NHS.

EU recruits are permitted to work in the UK without having to pass tests in English language fluency, which are now only applicable to NHS staff coming to work in the UK from outside the EU.

The patient group Patient Concern said language barriers can mean nursing staff and patients having to resort to sign language at times. But it is thought shortages in staff at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust was one of the main reasons for the climate of patient neglect which tarnished the trust’s reputation and resulted in some patients receiving inadequate care.

An investigation earlier this year focused on 14 trusts with abnormally high death rates and it was found that all 14 trusts had staffing levels below optimum numbers.

Immigration to the UK and right to work

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For legal advice on immigration and asylum, call Duncan Lewis Immigration solicitors on 020 7923 4020.