International nurses needed to plug local shortfall

Up to one hundred nurses from the Philippines and Italy could be drafted into Western Trust hospitals to help plug the gap in local nursing shortfall.

Up to one hundred international nursing contracts will be offered to overseas nurses to come and work in the Western Trust, it has been revealed.

The Trust says "an acute shortage" of locally supplied nurses means they need to draft in professionals from other parts of the world - and it's not a problem unique to the West.

They say this shortfall in indigenous nurses means all of Northern Ireland's Health and Social Care Trusts have had to embark on a "regional international recruitment campaign". 

"To date, 488 job offers have been made to nurses from the Philippines and 40 to European Nurses," read a statement from the Western Health and Social Care Trust.

While not all arriving at once, the Trust were also keen to stress that selection of these new recruits has been and will be rigorous.

With the European contingent due to arrive as early as next month, and the tranche of Filipino nurses to arrive in November, initially they'll be employed as healthcare assistants until such times as the necessary registration process with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is complete.

Once this process is completed, and they are fully registered with the NMC, these international recruits will then be placed across the Trust to fill existing vacancies. 

Addressing any potential misgivings surrounding the strength of the Trust's potential new workforce, Director of Nursing, Alan Corry Finn said:

"They have already been [through a selection process in their home country] and we believe they are suitable, otherwise we wouldn't bring them here. But, obviously the NMC, is the regulatory body, and they're the people that actually allow people to function as nurses - so they have to be satisfied that they have a command of English and of course, the clinical skills necessary - we're pretty hopeful that this shouldn't be a problem."

The Director was also keen to stress the reason behind this overseas recruitment campaign.

"We are recruiting every nurse that we possibly can who are local to us," he said.

"Most of the nurses who do their training here, want to end up working here. And we have jobs for all those people, if they want them. But there just isn't sufficient numbers," he added.