Local Hospitals Looking to Hire Overseas Due to Nurse Shortage

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Charing Cross and Hammersmith flying recruiters to the Philippines, India and Dubai

Three major West London hospitals have been flying recruiters to the Philippines, India and Dubai on campaigns to hire nurses.

This year, Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s hospitals will look to fill 1,000 nursing roles.

An HR director for the hospitals said 148 of them will come from overseas, with the vast majority from the Philippines.

A report from the Health Foundation charity in November last year counted 44,000 nursing vacancies across England.

Dawn Sullivan, deputy director of people for Imperial College London NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the three hospitals, explained why the Philippines is so ripe for hiring.

She said that since September 2018, small groups of staff have been on six international trips, including to India and Dubai and four to the Philippines.

“One of the biggest challenges the NHS faces is with its workforce,” Ms Sullivan said. “Since September 2018 we have run a series of campaigns.

“Our last campaign in the Philippines was in December 2019 and it resulted in 139 job offers in four days.

“When we run an event in the UK, we will recruit eight to 10 people on average. In the Philippines we’ll get 35 a day. The success rate is incredibly high.”

She added that the way nurses are trained there “is very similar to how we train in the UK”, so standards are comparable. English is also widely spoken in the Philippines, where the population is 109 million, so “language skills are very good”.

Ms Sullivan said the Trust has a total nursing and midwifery workforce of 4,800, and a 15 per cent annual turnover. It is also looking to “expand” by a further 150 next year.

“If you look at the size of the turnover we and other [hospitals] in London experience, we do have a significant number of vacancies each year.

“What’s really important to understand is that most years we’re looking to recruit anywhere between 850 to 1,000 nurses, primarily from within the UK.

“At Imperial we have 190 student nurses and we retain about 90 per cent of them. So our primary recruitment is from the UK,” she said.

While overseas recruitment is relatively new for Imperial College Trust, other hospitals in London such as King’s College have been head hunting abroad for over a decade.

Brexit so far has not had much effect on nurse recruitment for the Trust.

“We have not seen a significant change in our vacancies as a result of Brexit,” Ms Sullivan said.

“Historically, other hospitals have hired from Spain and Italy, but Imperial Trust has not done a lot of overseas recruitment until 2018.”

Owen Sheppard - Local Democracy Reporter

February 16, 2020