UK nurse numbers ‘strikingly low’ as many seek life in Australia
Posted 26 June 2023 - 16:18
Far more nurses educated in the UK move to practise in Australia and New Zealand than the other way round, and UK nurses’ pay lags behind similar nations’ too
The UK’s number of nurses per head of population is ‘strikingly low’ at a time when large numbers are migrating to Australia and New Zealand, research found.
But a report by The King’s Fund found the NHS is struggling to recruit nurses from those countries in return.
Heavy reliance on foreign-educated staff, mainly from lower-income countries, and substantially fewer beds than in equivalent-income countries were also identified in the report. It highlighted the NHS’s poor performance on measures including avoidable deaths, and said this should be a serious concern for political leaders and policymakers.
Nurses seeking opportunities overseas
Report author Siva Anandaciva said the UK was unable to hold on to a large volume of nursing talent that instead makes up large proportion of the workforces in Australia and New Zealand.
The report states: ‘In 2021, only 1.1% of foreign-trained nurses in the UK came from Australia, with 0.3% from New Zealand. In contrast, UK-trained nurses account for 20% of foreign-trained nurses in New Zealand and 25% in Australia.’
And the UK nurse workforce has above-average representation of professionals educated in countries such as India and the Philippines.
The UK was found to have fewer doctors and nurses per person than most similar countries. While some nations had fewer physicians per person and others fewer nurses, the UK is low on both.
‘We have a high reliance on foreign-trained staff but strikingly fewer doctors and nurses per head than most of our peer countries,’ the report adds.
Unison’s head of health Sara Gorton said: ‘Health services are clearly a higher priority for governments elsewhere in the world. Without urgent action, the staffing emergency will go from bad to worse, nurses will keep quitting for pastures new and the NHS backlog will never reduce.’
UK nurses’ pay below average for similar economies
Remuneration of nurses in the UK was also found to be below average, while remuneration for specialist doctors was above average. UK nurse salaries were roughly equal to the average wage for all workers, but in most similar countries, nurses’ pay was above the all-worker average.
The report found nurse salaries in the UK had fallen in real terms over the past decade, but in peer nations it has gone up.
The research compared the NHS to the health systems of 18 similar economies – 14 of the 15 original European Union member states, plus the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It described the NHS overall as ‘neither a leader nor a laggard’ among other health systems.
The Department of Health and Social Care said there were 12,900 more nurses working in the NHS than a year ago, adding the report recognised the NHS was one of the most efficiently run healthcare systems.
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