Hospitals Question Why Overseas Nurses Should Compete with Footballers for Visa
HOSPITAL bosses have called on the Home Office to provide relief with visa applications for overseas nurses.
The issue was brought to light at St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust board meeting.
It was revealed the trust has requested five work visas this month alone to help meet the staffing demand.
Ann Marr, chief executive of the trust, said: “The most important thing for us at the moment is to get some relief on this visa system for overseas nurses.
“We’re never going to get enough nurses in the system in the time we’ve got without doing something about overseas recruitment.
“There just needs to be a priority given to nurses when they are allocating visas.
“It’s not going to hurt anybody, it’s not going to damage anything, but it would change the way the NHS is run.”
Board members were told that more than 50 per cent of all work visas are granted to the NHS.
One of the trust objectives for 2018-19 is to recruit 50 nurses via international recruitment/global learners programme.
This is in addition to the recruitment of 80 permanent new nurses.
Richard Fraser, chairman of the board, said it was “perverse” that the NHS had to compete against people from other industries, including professional footballers.
He said: “It just seems perverse to me to have all these barriers you have got to get through. You have to do language tests, all these qualifications.
“You get them through that and then they go into this pot where they’re against Premier League footballers.
“Who gets this visa? A nurse that can save lives or some footballer we’ve never heard of from wherever.
“It seems mad to me that they should be in the same pot but all we can do is voice those concerns.”
Source : St Helen Star
