Welcome Immigrants?

[mrblear]

http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Nurses-Philippines-India-drafted-Lincolnshire/story-26760911-detail/story.html

[retrocop]

50% of the nurses in my wife's hospital are from the Phillipines at least for the last 15-20 years. (St Georges Trust NHS) and excellent nurses most of them are also.I can vouch for their care from a patient's perspective also.

[sandyRoe]

The Philippines train more nurses than they can employ. Their being here is doubly good.it provides staff for the beleaguered NHS and gives them a decent income.

[youngmafbog]

Controlled immigration is good. Providing we do not impact the donor country of course.

[tamborine]

They dont have degrees demanded of our potential nurses.

[New Judge]

“They dont have degrees demanded of our potential nurses.”

And that’s one of the reasons why the UK is short of home-trained nursing staff. Provided young people receive a decent secondary education (a big proviso at the moment for the UK seems somewhat incapable of providing a decent education by aged 18 on a widespread basis) there is no earthly reason why a degree in media studies should be required to take up nursing.

The UK has always welcomed immigration by people it has a need for and has invited. At present large numbers of immigrants arrive here who were not invited, who have little or nothing to offer and who are not wanted. And that’s why we must leave the EU because that is where they come from.

The difficulty is that the “Remain” camp deliberately fails to differentiate between the two categories so we shall shortly be seeing statements along the lines “If we leave the EU we will not be able to fill our vacant nursing posts”.

[Old_Geezer]

Leeching skills from other countries is not a good thing to do. Not only can it deprive the donor country of needed skills, even if it doesn't it has the inevitable issues surrounding culture/training/communication/etc. differences.

Not training the needed necessary skills to one's own population is also an awful option, it's very short-sighted not to invest in one's own population but expecting the taxpayer to pay for a lifetime of welfare instead.

Short term work-arounds to existing problems should not be continually employed in order to ignore the real issue and push a fix further and further into the future; and only our descendants.

Not offering sufficient in the home labour market to attract applicants from there is a sure sign one needs to improve the job offer; not an indication that one should short circuit the way the markets work by grabbing folk with a lower expectancy of lower pay from outside the market. Rules for supply/demand should apply to labour just as it does to goods/services.

Too great an expectation of staff and too low a wage is no reason to go look for those willing to put up with it, or brought up in a society which by comparison, the job offer seems great. It is disrespecting both the existing UK workforce and those attracted from elsewhere.

Not so much welcome, more accepted as inevitable until we get a better management of the service with folk who know how to run it properly.

[Old_Geezer]

... onto our ...
As I %£^"%&£** typed

[New Judge]

“You need 5 GCSEs + (at least) 2 A Levels (equivalent) or you can take an access course, before you start a Nursing (degree) course.”

Glad to hear it, db and thanks for the info. I was simply reacting to tambo’s statement. A couple of decent ‘A’ levels seems far more sensible. I seem to recall in prehistoric times there were two “streams” of nursing training – one leading to “State Enrolled” and the other to “State Registered”. I never really knew the difference (perhaps retro’s wife might?). I believe – though I have not checked – that one required decent educational qualifications (‘O’ levels probably) and one did not.

[mrblear]

Actually one didn't need any formal education in times passed. Entrance for training to be an SRN (sic) was by interview and written test. The SEN course was shorter and of a more practical nature. Some of the SRN trainees who found the course too rigorous changed to the SEN training.

[mrblear]

Er times past!

[mikey4444]

The NHS would have collapsed years ago if it weren't for the foreign staff it employs.

[naomi24]

divebuddy, I agree. I think our penchant for 'qualifications' loses us a lot of very able people.

[Old_Geezer]

I think it more likely they would have been forced to train more and offer better deals in the job position Mikey.

[mrblear]

@ divebuddy and naomi

I reckon Project 2000 was and is a disaster - if you've got time this may be of interest

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/christina-patterson/reforms-in-the-1990s-were-supposed-to-make-nursing-care-better-instead-theres-a-widely-shared-sense-7631273.html

[naomi24]

mrblear, thanks for that. I find this bit (among others} quite worrying.

//By next year, all nurses who qualify in this country will have to get a degree.//

Only those who qualify in this country? I wonder what standards we will accept from the rest?

[naomi24]

divebuddy, I've known some excellent foreign nurses but I've also come across some very poor foreign nurses. However, the question remains that if nurses will require a degree to qualify why aren't similar standards to be demanded of others?