I'll give you five years. Just Do It!

If I told you that 15% of the employees in a vital UK industry that is of critical national importance come from outside the UK you may understandably express surprise.  You may ask why and how did this happen.  And you may well ask what would be the consequences if this 15% went AWOL.  You may also let you mind wander to how could we fix the problem.    

The answer to the last point is pretty easy.  If we are not training enough people that we need to go overseas to find people, let’s invest and train our own, right here in the UK.  Then we won’t need to scour the world to find these people.  Taking them away from countries that could use their skills. Then we can be safe and secure in the knowledge that we are home producing quality people. 

This has all come to a head with some suggesting that the threshold for language skills should be reduced in the nursing sector.   

A spokesman for the Royal College of Nursing said:  “The NHS is struggling to recruit overseas nurses but we would firmly oppose any change just to plug workforce gaps. It must be robust and command the confidence of the public.”    

Jackie Smith, chief executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council said: “Nurses and midwives trained outside the UK make up around 15 percent of our register. They are vital to the delivery of health and care services across the UK.”   

Can you see any other critical UK business that would allow for such volatility in its recruitment policy?  I can’t. 

And don’t take the intellectually sloppy route and just blame the current government.  They are pumping more money into the bottomless hole that is the NHS at a greater rate than any previous government.   

But is it not time to invest?  Take some of that money and invest in nurse training.  It takes three years to train a nurse.  It is not beyond the wit of man to say, ok, in five years, all our nurses will be home trained.  And totally fluent in English.  I say, Just Do It.