Pay cuts and dearer parking won't lure nurses to Salisbury

IF I had to go into hospital (touch wood) I’m pretty sure that the main thing preoccupying me wouldn’t be the nationality of the nurses.

As long as they were kind and competent and not too busy to talk to me, I’d be grateful.

So it’s welcome news that Salisbury District Hospital has managed to recruit 47 Portuguese nurses to bring its staff up to strength.

But it does beg the question why we aren’t able to train or retain enough healthcare workers in Britain for our own needs.

As taxpayers, you and I are forking out money that we can ill afford to keep young people, bored out of their minds, doing nothing.  In February the national NEET conference heard that there are more than a million 16-24 year olds who are not in education, employment or training.

And that’s not the full picture. What about the hundreds of graduates working in shops and bars while they spend months searching for employment commensurate with their qualifications?

Obviously, not all of them would have what it takes to work in the NHS. That demands a special type of person.

But the mismatch of supply and demand suggests such woeful workforce planning that somewhere in the Departments of Health and Education, whole legions of heads should surely roll.

Just six years ago NHS vacancies were so scarce that according to the BBC, one-third of newly-qualified nurses hadn’t found work after six months.

That same year – surprise, surprise - the Royal College of Nursing reported that 5,000 British nurses were planning to move to Australia.

This week the Nursing Times tells us that the number of district nurses nationally has been cut by 42 per cent in a decade.  Those who remain are overwhelmed. Yet these are the people who can prevent our increasingly elderly population becoming ‘bed blockers’. So, more pressure on our hospitals. Joined-up thinking doesn’t seem to come into it.

But what do we do about it? And how can we make working in the NHS a more appealing option?

It’s no time at all since SDH bosses were talking about joining a cartel to force through pay cuts - possibly not the best way to make employees feel valued. Now they are raising the cost of workplace parking, and there have been plenty of grumbles about that on the Journal website.

I don’t know what the answer to the problem is, but I know what it isn’t.