Boosts in staff searched for overseas
A survey by the Health Service Journal has revealed that 53% of NHS organisations believed they didn’t have enough staff, with over half of the senior management looking abroad to fill nurse requirements.
69% of the respondents said nurse staffing levels would be increasing over the course of the year, with 91% of acute trusts wanting to hire more nurses. 54% said they were planning to make these additions by hiring overseas, with 82% of acute trusts in the same position.
Trusts will be particularly focusing on acquiring doctors and nurses from Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy, as well as further afield. A quarter of the trusts surveyed said they aimed to fill a minimum of 50 jobs, although 52% of the organisations said they did not use aptitude tests when recruiting, despite the recent emphasis on values and behaviour following the Francis inquiry.
Hiring from abroad
Maybe the reason hospital trusts are having to search the globe for healthcare professionals is due to the worsening staff morale that the survey also recorded, with 18% saying morale was poor. Howard Catton, the policy director at the Royal College of Nursing, told the HSJ “Continued attacks on pay and the prospect of removing incentives, along with the mismatch of supply and demand means people are going to have to look at the offer they are making to nurses.”