The observational nurse

I have no comment on this but thought I’d share in case some have missed Mr Buckley’s thoughts.

https://www.facebook.com/share/17eRCHvCLf/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Foreign NHS Nurses – the solution or the problem?

A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that I thought foreign nurses in the NHS who are not happy with our immigration system should go home – instead of moaning about it and threatening to remove their labour. What happened next shocked me.

Not only did the post go viral, but it also generated thousands of comments disagreeing with me: some polite, some not. I was told that the best nurses in any country are the foreign nurses. NHS nurses informed me that their foreign colleagues are amazing. Others informed me that without them, we would all die. Many foreign nurses stated that they are trained to a much higher standard than homegrown nurses.

Is any of this true? I will get to this shortly.

The NHS is broken. It has been broken for a very long time. We throw more money at it, and nothing improves. This has happened for several reasons. The main one is incompetent politicians. Followed by mass immigration that overloads the system, an incompetent management structure, and a reduction in the quality of the staff employed.

Foreign nurses are a Godsend to every government, for they are an immediate answer to a problem the public demands fixing. Foreign labour has become a drug, and our politicians are the addicts. Instead of long-term planning, they rely on foreign labour because it is cheaper and quicker. This keeps wages down in the NHS, as well as working conditions.

Without foreign nurses, wages would increase to attract more people into the role. They would be more valuable due to their shortage, and this would improve their working conditions. British nurses leaving the UK for better opportunities would decrease. The number of young people going into nursing would increase. Supply & Demand. Unfortunately, our addiction to foreign labour is the ‘spanner in the works’ that stops the above from happening.

None of this is the fault of individual foreign nurses; they are invited here to do a job. The fault lies firmly at the feet of our politicians.

The three top countries sending their citizens to be nurses in the NHS are India, the Philippines, and Nigeria. Fraud and corruption are everyday activities in most of the world. Why would nurses from these countries be any different?

I am not saying that every foreign nurse is corrupt. But if fraud is an acceptable survival strategy in certain countries, then those citizens will be more likely to hold those views.

Let us look at the Yunnik Test Centre in Nigeria. The UK’s Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) looked into this nursing qualification centre in 2023. It was widely acknowledged that organised fraud was taking place. Nearly 2000 nurses had their tests invalidated. 48 were registered and working as NHS nurses, and another 669 were in the process.

In a 2025 scandal, the NMC was found to have wrongly approved over 350 fraudulent or underqualified nurses. Cases involved testing centres in India, Nigeria, and Pakistan – over a hundred nurses were removed.

Historical NMC data shows recurring but smaller-scale issues:

2017–2021: 101 removed for deliberately misleading about qualifications; 144 removed for incorrect registrations

2018: 11 removed after using fake documents from the Pakistan Nursing Council.

In the context of the whole NHS, these numbers are tiny. They are probably a lot higher, but still a small number compared to the number of NHS nurses.

Can employing too many foreign nurses damage the overall care of a hospital? Or at least, the perceived care from a hospital?

In 2015, a study found that hospitals with a higher number of nurses trained overseas receive poorer ratings from patients. 12,000 patients from 46 NHS hospitals took part in the survey, which was undertaken by the University of Southampton and King's College London.

The study found that hospitals that had the highest number of nurses from abroad also had the highest level of patient dissatisfaction. Patients reported that they had not been treated with dignity and struggled to understand the staff.

The study stated: “Use of non-UK educated nurses in English NHS hospitals is associated with lower patient satisfaction. Importing nurses from abroad to substitute for domestically-educated nurses may negatively impact the quality of care.”

Are foreign-trained nurses more likely to be disciplined or sacked than British homegrown nurses? An interesting question where we can guess the answer.

Data from the NMC indicates that overseas-trained nurses are referred to 'fitness to practise' processes at disproportionately higher rates. Black nurses are nearly twice as likely to be referred compared to the average British nurse.

European-trained nurses are also more likely to receive sanctions preventing practice, such as striking off or suspension, compared to those trained in the UK.

These disparities are a huge problem for the NMC, which is probably an anti-racist organisation that hangs its head in shame at these stats. Hence, this data is hard to come by, hidden, and under-reported.

The point of this article is not to attack foreign nurses and demonise them; nothing could be further from the truth. My point is that our dependency on foreign medical staff is not beneficial to the NHS, the country, or the patient.

The only people the status quo benefits are the foreign nurses who gain a first-world wage. And our incompetent, lazy, pathetic politicians who cannot be trusted to run a bath.

To fix a problem, one must understand the problem. I hope you now understand this problem a little better.