Dozens of nurses arriving at Sandwell Hospital from down under
More than 50 nurses will be brought in by Sandwell’s NHS trust from Australia and New Zealand in an effort to bolster the workforce.
The reinforcements will arrive in the West Midlands next year and will include some returning Brits, the chief executive of the trust, which runs Sandwell and City hospitals, confirmed.
Trust bosses have previously raised concerns about staffing shortages at the hospitals and keeping nurses in their posts for long enough.
Toby Lewis, chief executive of the Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, said in a report to board members: “We are making progress with our Overseas Recruitment work.
Discussions
“More than 50 nurses will join us over the next year from the Antipodes, albeit some are returning Brits.”
Mr Lewis added: “We are engaged in discussions with a number of other partners about other recruitment projects abroad, notwithstanding intimations that a national approach could be taken under the recently-published Interim People Plan from NHS England.”
It is not the first time the trust has looked overseas to bring in extra workers.
More than 100 nurses were hired from the Philippines in 2016.
Then in 2017 chiefs were forced to make an ‘immediate intervention’ by bringing in more agency workers as 17 Band Five nurses left Sandwell’s NHS trust in September 2017.
Another 12 went the following month, with leaders admitting they had witnessed an ‘increasing trend’ of nurses moving elsewhere.
