to think the nhs being reliant on immigrants is nothing to be proud of

[traciebanbanjo]

It's pretty selfish draining so many medical professionals from poor countries like the Philippines and Nigeria. So why is it almost always presented as a good thing?

The solution would be to fund places correctly over here but nobody in power ever looks towards the long term.

Sashh - so would something like structuring as higher level / degree level apprenticeships be appropriate?

Yes, possibly.

I wasn't a nurse, I worked full time and did my academic study on 'day release' which was a 10AM - 8PM day of lectures and then study in my own time.

I did an HNC but when the first degrees came in for my occupation they were still day or block release.

Now there are some funded places but you can also do a full time degree.

I don't think the problem is the degree but that nursing and other health care professions are now based away from the hospital, you learn so much through osmosis and interaction with your colleagues and with patients.

As for nurses being above removing canulas or other such nonsense. If you think you are too good to clean someone's bum you are not good enough to work in the NHS.

Oh and when I rule the world the management will spend 2 weeks a year on wards, working shifts, cleaning up bodily fluids, making beds etc.

But students DO spend 2300 hours working on placements and being assessed. And many work part time on the bank as HCAs.

My grandma trained as an SRN in the 1950s. Apparently their SRN certificate was seen as being the equivalent of a degree and far fewer people went to university then. They still had blocks in the nursing school for lectures and essay writing. This would be for several weeks at a time.

Healthcare has moved on a lot since the 1950s. She did say that her job was mainly washes, bed making, wound dressing and drug rounds.

I do think that there is an underlying plan to have band 4s as assistant practitioners/nursing associates doing everything that band 5 RNs do except medication. And having one band 5 per shift as a co-ordinator and to do the drugs round. With band 2s and band 3s doing the jobs that you don’t need to be RN qualified to do.

Same is happening to physios and occy therapists. Band 3 and band 4 support workers doing the bulk of the hands on work.

[i]Yes, we need more British nurses. The bursary should be re-instated and the degree programme needs to change.[/i]

Totally agree that nursing education in the UK needs to be brought into line with comparable countries. The science, pharmacology and clinical skills are sorely lacking. But if we made the course more rigorous, we'd need to attract strong academic applicants. At the moment we're scarcely attracting applicants at all, and that's unlikely to change until the salary and working conditions improve.

(There would also be enormous kickback from the contingent who believe that nurses don't need anything but cool hands, a gentle voice and the ability to make a bed, but, well, change is hard for some people)

Oh Daily Mail readers write such rubbish about nursing in the online comments section. They really think that nurses don’t need any academic knowledge or training as all they do is make beds and damp dust. They are always saying that nurses should be nursing not doing paperwork. So I’m not sure who would be doing the care plans, assessments and referrals or filling in the obs charts.

Oh and the constant cries of “bring back matron” despite matrons in every hospital. Or perhaps they mean that a senior nurse should be managing the hospital budget, procurement, HR and legal matters. Instead of you know, nurses doing nursing and specialists doing the accounting etc.

We have the NHS and training on or doorstep yet so few British people want to become Dr's and surgeons. It's down to foreign students who have a better work ethic who come here and 'take our jobs'.

Sorry but certainly in Scotland this is absolutely rubbish. There are many, many school leavers with the qualifications to do medicine and yet there are rounds and rounds of interviews for the few university places available to do medicine. There should be more funding and places so that we can “grow our own”. If the next generation has these aspirations, desire and intelligence then the government should be supporting them instead of taking the cheap option.

We need a greater variety of routes into nursing that doesn’t involve getting a degree. Possibly the creation of junior levels of nursing (that are lower paid) where apprentices can join and get a practice based qualifications that can be cashed in later when they want to go into degree levels (which should be higher paid)?

Many overseas nurses who come here don’t have Nursing degrees, just experience and practice based qualifications. They are deemed good enough for the NHS and so the UK gov should deem this good enough for homegrown nurses too.

Part of the reason immigrant doctors come over here is to learn and get experience in a way that they cant in their home country. We benefit and they often do too, as many return home. It's much more complicated than it first appears.
In the same way, in certain specialities, many uk doctors go to Australia, to gain experience in a way that they cant here. Many, if not most come back to the UK.

I agree we should train more of our own. However, one of the benefits is to spread learning.
We had a brilliant programme planned with Malta, which as far as I'm aware has been shelved now.

When df was dying last year he had twelve carers over about 6 weeks - 11/12 were immigrants.

We live in an area of full employment. It’s brilliant the self-sacrifice of the brexiteers who want those people to leave in ofrder to force locals to do those jobs.

Exciting times ahead especially for the sick and elderly.

As for medicine that can definitely benefit from reducing academic requirements for degree entry routes for GPs. Paramedics can become ECPs and provide general practitioner type advice in urgent care centres but don’t need 3 As at A Level to get onto their course. So why do GPs?

Yes, we need more British nurses. The bursary should be re-instated and the degree programme needs to change.
I agree with this, ridiculous to remove the bursary. We definitely need more home grown NHS staff.
As a regular patient in London NHS hospitals over the last 10 years or so, the high number of immigrant nurses is not the utopia it is made out to be. Making yourself understood can be difficult and I have witnessed many times, nurses who do not understand each other, e.g. African to Eastern European. When you're sick and vulnerable and the person caring for you does not understand what you mean and you have to explain everything over and over it can be distressing. Then many of the patients don't speak English and that results in further chaos. The lack of shared language and culture can make a hospital stay very much worse and this is all stuff I wouldn't have a problem with in another context.
I'll get my fire retardant coat

Who has ever suggested it’s utopia?

No As a young healthy person I’m with the selfless brexiteers: let’s have a massive shake up- send the foreign ones home and let the Brits take up the slack. It’s so easy it’s genius.

@LifeBeginsAtGin - Why do you feel the need to be so aggressive?! I will reply to you nicely without being insulting.

And yes, a lot of people do think that nurses are over educated and have no idea what a nurse actually does. Look on any DM story on the NHS or nursing and you will read several comments about matrons and silly nurses who are too posh to wash. Direct quotes so obviously people do think that!

When I was a student nurse I had patients say things like “oh you don’t need to be clever to be a nurse love, I see what you do - throw pills out and clean!”

So yes, quite clearly some people do have those views. I haven’t just made it up for the lolz.

It’s not a point of pride that so many in the NHS are immigrants but it is a fact now and will continue to be a necessity all the while we cannot encourage young Britons into the profession. Even if we could recruit the number of nursing and medical trainees we need today it will be years until we have enough fully qualified. It is madness to start imposing strict immigration restrictions while we are still so dependent on overseas staff.

Just to clarify it’s not a point of shame either just a reality.

The problem for medicine is not recruiting medical students. The problem lies in retaining doctors and attracting them to unpopular specialties (eg GP, psychiatry, obstetrics). It is still highly competitive to get into medicine. Many juniors are doing their foundation jobs and going off to Australia/ New Zealand. Not so much for the money but better hours and working environment. General Practice and some hospital specialties are at crisis point with people not wanting to do them.

Duchy the type of minor illness advice that ECPs provide is increasingly a small part of what GPs do day today. The way forward is likely to be ANPs/ ECPs providing this type of minor illness care while GPs oversee and deal with the increasingly complex patients on multiple medications with multiple comorbidities.

... but then inturn this adds to the hospital nursing crisis with nurses leaving hospital for community primary care posts.