Recruiters claim the shortage is being exacerbated by an exodus of talent both of experienced and newly-qualified nurses, and high barriers to entry to nurses seeking to come and work in the UK.

Yesterday the BBC reported on data showing that one in 10 nurses are leaving the NHS in England each year, with 33,000 leaving the service last year, a rise of 20% on 2012-13.

While Recruiter has reported in the past about tough English language testing affecting the pipeline of nursing talent into the NHS, Charlotte Fisher, international operations director at HCL, told Recruiter this is not the only barrier oversees nurses face.

“The NMC [Nursing and Midwifery Council] process is quite long winded,” Fisher says. Nurses outside the UK take an English language exam, then a test in their home country. After their data is processed with the NMC, they get their visa, she explains. 

“They fly to the UK and settle in the hospital as a ‘nurse awaiting registration’. The final part of the NMC registration is what’s called an OSCE [Objective Structured Clinical Examination] exam –a practical exam that they have to take here in the UK. 

“They’re relocated; the test centres are quite tough, so they’re failing people in the practical exam. The nurses used to have two attempts to pass the OSCE and when they failed twice, they’d get deported having been through all that process and all that cost to the NHS, which takes between six and 12 months. The NMC extended that to three attempts. 

“The challenge we have is that the NMC timelines don’t tie in with the immigration timelines, so you have to take all of those attempts within eight months. If you haven’t passed OSCE, you can’t get re-sponsored and go to another trust; you get deported because immigration won’t allow you to stay.”

According to Ciara Campbell, senior operations manager at MPA Healthcare, Northern Ireland, the UK’s nursing talent shortage is being intensified by a growing number of newly-qualified nurses seeking to leave the UK altogether.

“MPA has noticed a steady decline in the number of nurses available to recruit. Every year we attend Final Year Student Nursing Recruitment Fairs in Northern Ireland. What we’re seeing is an appetite for newly-qualified nurses to start their nursing careers abroad, to work in other countries including Australia and Canada. We now have less newly-qualified nurses than we ever had as a result. Pay and conditions are typical key reasons why.”

All of this means, recruiters are having to up their marketing efforts. Pamela Bruce, managing director at Nurse Plus, told Recruiter: “We run specific recruitment campaigns through job boards, social media and traditional advertising that are targeted towards nurses and have a dedicated head of nursing role to support our potential and existing nurses with any issues or queries.

“Whatever the outcome, it is important that as an industry, we continue to adapt to health and social care pressures.”

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