25% Of UK Nurses Come From Nations That Need Them

A quarter of all new nurses in the UK were trained in poorer countries with more severe staffing shortages, Adam Bychawski reported for UK’s openDemocracy.

Photo Insert: More than 17,000 Filipino nurses have registered to practise in the UK in the past five years – almost 13,00 of whom joined the NHS – despite the Philippine Department of Health facing a shortage of 100,000 nurses.

Since 2017, 50,000 of the nurses who registered to practise in the UK were trained in countries that have too few of their own nurses to provide the standard of healthcare recommended by the United Nations (UN).

Once registered, nurses can be employed in the National Health Service (NHS) or the private sector. It is likely that many of them joined the NHS, with 38,000 new NHS England nurses reporting their nationalities as countries with severe staffing shortages in the past five years.

Nurses trained in India and the Philippines make up the majority of foreign-trained new recruits since 2017, both of which are experiencing nursing shortages.

More than 21,000 Indian nurses have registered to practise in the UK – all of whom paid for their training – despite India needing to recruit 4.3 million more nurses by 2024 to make up a growing shortfall.

According to the WHO, countries need at least 27.4 nurses per 10,000 people – but India has just 17 per 10,000.

More than 17,000 Filipino nurses have registered to practise in the UK in the past five years – almost 13,00 of whom joined the NHS – despite the Philippine Department of Health facing a shortage of 100,000 nurses.

This is despite the UK government saying it would take “into consideration the national demand for healthcare vis-a-vis the number of healthcare workers in the Philippines” in a memorandum of understanding with the Philippine government in 2021.

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