This isn't an AIBU per se, but conversations need to be happening surrounding the current state of recruitment within the NHS.
I am lucky, i have been a nurse for a number of years and i have a hospital based job i love. I also have numerous student nurses per year in my role as a placement assessor and have the privilege of working with some fantastic students in recent years who will go one to be brilliant nurses. Locally, student nurses places available have increased 50% at one university since 2020, and another university added an additional campus which became affiliated with our trust, this doubled the amount of students having placements in our trust on the whole. With awareness being raised surrounding the shortage of nurses in the UK, this was good news.
However, in the last 12-18 months, the government also massively increased the recruit from over seas initiative. One trust reported that they had had over 350 nurses recruited from overseas, and that almost all vacancies had been filled by these nurses ( BBC News Article ). Each nurses recruited from overseas costs the NHS approximately £10-12k, however the shortages when the drive was initiated were so high that it justified the costing to bring in much needed nursing staff. This is a common picture across UK trusts. The NHS would absolutely cease to function (more so than the current failures that we see and hear about daily) without recruitment from overseas, it is vital. And the majority of these nurses are fantastic and we are lucky to have them. Obviously there are a minority where their training is sub-optimal, and the NHS has to provide further training at further costs, and there was scandal surrounding nurses recruited from Nigeria who hadn't received the formal training they stated they had had and were completely unqualified (Guardian Article ). However, this was a very small number in comparison to the amount of nurses recruited.
Don't be fooled into believing this means wards and departments are running with the correct number of staff - it does not. They are still being ran below optimal ratios. It means there are no more vacancies, as wards and departments are not being given the budgets to hire the amount of staff they need to run at full staffing levels, the use of high costs agency nurses, and bank staff paid at higher rates than contracted staff are still used. But it does mean that newly qualified nurses, nurses that trained within trusts, to the UK standard of nursing education, and gave 2300 hours of unpaid working hours to these trusts, often filling in as unpaid heath care support workers rather than prioritising their learning, now do not have a job when they graduate.
Locally, after a recruitment event, this equated to some 40% of the students qualifying do not have jobs. There are currently 5 band 5 (which is the banding for a newly qualified nurse) advertised nursing roles, none of which accepting NQN's due to the nature of the position. This is the same up and down the country. 1000's of students, tens of thousands of pounds in debt, having worked in essence for free for 3 years, will not have a job to go into. Nurses are leaving the NHS in droves, but these positions are not put out to recruit for, as the money has been spent on overseas recruitment and wards do not have the budgets.
Currently, there isn't a solution for this, we cant just take the jobs back from the overseas nurses, and this isn't their fault, they are, as i said a vital addition, and they are fantastic nurses for the most part. But i wanted to raise awareness, that if my large trust is a true representation of the state of NHS England on the whole, approximately 40% of new graduate nurse, cannot find employment.