Nearly half of foreign NHS nurses plan to quit Starmer Britain

[Lentilweaver]

Predictably.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/14/nearly-half-of-foreign-nhs-nurses-plan-quit-starmer-britain/

People wanted immigration to fall and it is. Some of us have been talking about the care sector and NHS but apparently fewer immigrants was preferable to functioning services. I think Reform are still rambling on about net zero.

What was it before?

I have friends who are foreign nurses and for them that was always the plan, come for a few years to save money then go home. That’s one of the inevitabilities of immigration.

I'm a nurse, I think we've gone OTT with the international nursing programmes. Student nurses finishing their degree are struggling to find jobs which isn't good.

I know nurses who are being made redundant with ward closures. I know student nurses graduating and unable to get a job. It is riciculous but true, the cash strapped NHS is cutting nurses jobs despite mushrooming demand and nurses being on their knees with overwork and responsibility creep.

The Telegraph just wants to stick the boot into Labour as usual. Its readers wouldn't countenance properly funding the NHS to provide good wages and conditions to the nurses we already have and are training.

@HeadNorth

"The Telegraph just wants to stick the boot into Labour as usual. Its readers wouldn't countenance properly funding the NHS to provide good wages and conditions to the nurses we already have and are training."

Very true. Whilst the Tories claim to be tougher on migration than Labour- let's be clear that this only meant tough on illegal migration.

At the same time the Tories oversaw the biggest increase in legal migration because it provided cheap imported labour rather than pay a salary that would attract UK nationals to do the job. This meant that private sector employers such as care homes could still make high profits and public sector employers such as the NHS didn't get as much funding.

The Telegraph just wants to stick the boot into Labour as usual. Its readers wouldn't countenance properly funding the NHS to provide good wages and conditions

Well as well as the Telegraph readers, neither do Labour give your first paragraph.

Tbh most foreign nurses will not get the same money in their home countries. There is a reason they come over here to work (thank goodness they do), so even if they want to leave, most won't.

Bearing in mind we complain that doctors trained in the UK then slope off to other countries, I presume those countries that have the expense of training nurses who then slope off here feel the same way. Particularly if they are poor countries in great need of nurses and care workers who instead are here looking after people in the UK. We never seem to care much about those countries.

Some of them don’t. The Philippines train many more nurses than they need specifically to export them. It benefits their economy as they send money home.

Many of them do though. We should try and train our own nurses and pay them properly rather than importing them from developing countries. I don't know if Keir Starmer agrees.

My sister and her friend are student nurses nearing the end of their courses. They have been told that no jobs are available. My sister is applying for supermarket jobs until she can find one

How can this be possible when the most recent data shows there are 40k nursing vacancies in the UK?

This.
Our trust have just put out a voluntary severance scheme for all staff, they don't normally include clinical staff.

What data is this? I, too, know newly graduate nurses who can't get a job (Scotland).

There are currently over 5k nursing vacancies in Scotland according to the RCN.

https://www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/news/new-data-support-rcn-scotland-calls-for-action-071223

Given half of ALL nurses plan to quit it's no surprise that half of foreign nurses plan to do the same.

These won't be roles suitable for newly qualified nurses.

How do you know that? Or did you just make it up?

Have a look on NHS Scotlands website. The words Senior, Charge, Lead and B7 feature an awful lot.

We have been recruiting foreign nurses at my Trust for several years (hundreds per year). Very very few return home except for holidays. One of the attractions is that they stay. What is wrong is we have recruited so many we couldn’t offer jobs to our home grown students….so very badly planned

So experienced nurses move up and make room at the bottom. It’s how career progression works.

Because vacancies exist it does not mean they are being filled by recruiting nurses, sadly. it usually means overworked nurses, unsafe practices and a reliance on agency staff. As I stated a ward has recently been closed with nurses needing to relocate or lose their jobs. The patient demand is there but the budget isn't, so it is cut, cut, cut, with vacancies unfilled and agency nurses used to plug the gaps.

Not in the NHS....

It’s how it worked when I worked in the NHS. Given that my stepdaughter who qualified in 2019 is now a Band 7 it seems it still does for some people.

The entry level jobs simply aren't there anymore.
Because the NHS is filling those jobs either foreign trained nurses that have post qualification experience.