Thousands of foreign nurses a year leave UK to
work abroad
Exclusive: Surge in nurses originally from outside the
EU moving overseas prompts concern Britain is a ‘staging post’ in their careers
Denis
Campbell Health policy editor
Mon 25 Mar
2024 05.00 GMT
Almost
9,000 foreign nurses a year are leaving the UK to work abroad, amid a sudden
surge in nurses quitting the already understaffed NHS for better-paid jobs
elsewhere.
The rise in
nurses originally from outside the EU moving to take up new posts abroad has
prompted concerns that Britain is increasingly becoming “a staging post” in
their careers.
The number
of UK-registered nurses moving to other countries doubled in just one year
between 2021-22 and 2022-23 to a record potential 12,400 and has soared
fourfold since before the coronavirus pandemic.
Seven out
of 10 of those leaving last year – 8,680 – qualified as a nurse somewhere other
than the UK or EU, often in India or the Philippines. Many had worked in
Britain for up to three years, according to research from the Health
Foundation.
The vast
majority of those quitting are heading to the US, New Zealand or Australia,
where nurses are paid much more than in the UK – sometimes up to almost double.
Experts
have voiced their alarm about the findings and said the NHS across the UK,
already struggling with about 40,000 vacancies for nurses and hugely reliant on
those coming from abroad, is increasingly losing out in the global recruitment
race.
“It feels
like the NHS is falling down the league table as a destination of choice for
overseas nurses,” said Dame Anne Marie Rafferty, a professor of nursing studies
at King’s College London.
“Worryingly,
it feels as if the UK is perceived not as a high- but middle-income country in
pay terms and as a staging post where nurses from overseas can acclimatise to
western-type health systems in the search for better pay and conditions.”
Last year,
12,400 nurses working in the UK applied for a certificate of current
professional status (CCPS), which they need to have to move to work in another
country, the Health Foundation report shows. It is not clear exactly how many
of these actually went ahead and left the country.
The largest
increase among that group was in overseas-trained nurses who had only worked in
the UK for three years or less. That pronounced trend in short stays suggests
that for many recruits from abroad “the UK may be a stepping-stone prior to
moving to other destinations”, the thinktank said.
It pointed
out that OECD data showed that while a nurse in the UK earned on average
$46,000 a year (£36,500) – “substantially less than in Australia ($71,000 or
£56,350), New Zealand ($57,000 or £45,000) and the US ($84,900 or £67,000)”.
Application
for a CCPS to work in America rose tenfold between 2021-22 and 2022-23 after a
change in its visa policy meant many more foreign nurses were able to move
there.
The Royal
College of Nursing said the growing exodus of overseas-trained nurses was due
to the significant erosion in pay the nursing profession has suffered since
2010.
Prof Pat
Cullen, the RCN’s chief executive and general secretary, said: “It is deeply
worrying to see more and more overseas nurses choosing to leave the UK. The
recruitment of domestic nurses is collapsing and services are gripped by
workforce shortages.
“With
patient needs already going unmet, the prospect of losing more of our
international colleagues doesn’t bear thinking about.
“The
reality is that sustained attacks on pay and poor working conditions are
leaving the UK’s healthcare services unable to compete on the world stage.
International nurses, like all nurses, have every right to choose to work in
countries that better value their skills and expertise. It’s no joke that nurse
pay in the UK is joint bottom of 35 OECD countries.”
Report
co-author Elaine Kelly, the assistant director at the Health Foundation’s
research centre, said that, with an acute nursing shortage and so many overseas
nurses quitting the UK, “if the NHS is to avoid becoming a stepping stone to
careers elsewhere, it needs to be a more attractive place to work for all
nurses, regardless of where they were trained”.
She said
the brain drain was especially worrying because it cost the NHS about £10,000
to replace each foreign recruit who then moved elsewhere.
The
Department of Health and Social Care said it did not recognise the Health
Foundation’s figures. The latest Nursing and Midwifery Council data showed
fewer nurses – those trained in the UK and outside it – leaving the NHS, a
spokesperson said.
“We hugely
value the care provided by our fantastic nurses, which is why we negotiated a
fair and reasonable deal with the trade unions delivering a 5% pay rise, two
additional one-off bonuses equivalent to 6% of pay and a series of non-pay
measures to support the NHS workforce [in England].
“We also
delivered on our commitment to recruit an additional 50,000 NHS nurses six
months early, and the first ever long-term workforce plan – backed by over
£2.4bn of government funding – will provide the biggest training expansion in
NHS history, ensuring that up to 130,000 fewer staff, including nurses, will
leave the NHS over the next 15 years.”
This article was amended on 26 March 2024 to
clarify that the number of nurses applying for a certificate of current
professional status is not necessarily equivalent to the number of nurses
actually leaving the UK.
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