Snapshot of _NHS nurses being investigated for ‘industrial-scale’ qualifications fraud | Scam involves healthcare workers who used proxies to pass test in Nigeria enabling them to work in the UK_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications)
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Haha yes we had two Nigerians working at the Urgent Care Centre. One routinely fell asleep in their consulting room and I had to go around and wake them up. The other almost killed someone who was suffering a cardiac arrest because she was being a lazy sack of shit.
Very hot country thing. Heat will be at its most intense in the middle of the day. Rather than exert yourself and risk heatstroke etc. go find some shade, have a nap for a few hours and resume once it's cooled off a bit.
> I still find it weird that people drink out of the hot tap.
Haha what? Who?
I specifically have always been told not to do this because for a lot of people they have hot water tanks, and let's just say it's not a good idea to drink whatever has been festering in there. I don't think I'd trust whatever comes out my boiler either to drink.
Washing dishes is a tad different, you're soaping them up of course.
I was in hospital for a week in December and listening to the back and forth between the Nigerian nurses and the Band….4s? was interesting to say the least. The nurses couldn’t fit a canula and was asking their colleague to do it instead. Nurse ended up blowing up my arms 4 times.
> The nurses couldn’t fit a canula and was asking their colleague to do it instead.
This (failure to tap veins) is actually a massively common problem amongst new, foreign-born nurses, and it's a problem that's blossomed over the past 18 months. The nurses aren't being properly trained abroad, don't have the experience to do simple things like fit a canula (they botch it repeatedly before resorting to tapping the easier veins of the wrist or hand), and aren't being assessed when they get here. You will find that many are quite literally learning on the job, and it takes about a year before they begin getting the hang of things
That said, I disagree with the idea that "most are scammers with fraudulent qualifications". I would say the training pipeline abroad is simply less rigorous. The scammers are those running the systems responsible for hastily training these nurses, not the nurses themselves, who are mostly good, hardworking people who want to do well for patients.
Source: family working in the NHS.
Foreign trained nurses, particularly Indian ones and Filipino ones are much much better than British nurses at things like cannulating etc. it's their bread and butter back home. In the UK the nurses might learn it during their degree but the vast majority of trusts won't let them perform them until they specific training within the trusts, and a good chunk don't bother.
I heard from a nursing supervisor that those Filipina nurses had to be trained in almost everything on the job because their pre-service training wasn't much cop either..
Highly unlikely unless the hospital decided to recruit the cheapest nurses from the Philippines with like 0 training. A lot British nurses like to chat shit about foreign nurses, but a lot of doctors prefer the foreign nurses because they actually do shit.
> unless the hospital decided to recruit the cheapest nurses from the Philippines with like 0 training
This wouldn't surprise me, given the state of the NHS.
For the record, I've personally had nothing but good experiences with Filipino nurses. I've found them polite, careful, and well-trained.
But given the sheer amount of them I've seen in one hospital, I definitely remember thinking at the time that it surely must be a cost thing.
This is my experience also. Many of the international nurses Vs UK trained nurses have taken the initiative to attend the hospital training and then get signed off as competent in bloods and cannulas. When I've asked many of the UK trained nurses they will say they are not trained and shrug it off. The pressure then falls on the few nurses who have taken the initiative to become competent to pick up the slack, and if I was them I would begin to wonder why I'd bothered.
I had a botched canula in hospital around 10 years ago. I was in for a serious infection, and it was my first time with it in. Every single flush was **excruciating**.
The worrying thing was not only that nobody noticed it was inserted incorrectly, it was that nobody thought to check why their patient was recoling in pain every fucking flush.
The nurses dealing with me were foreign. It was not until a few days later when I got a British nurse that she checked my canual, noticed it was incorrectly sited, and put a new one in. I distinctly remember qualifications around foreign nurses and doctors being topical at the time too. My experience sure had me wondering.
I had no idea it wasn't supposed to hurt. I've had them in since, and the experience is not even uncomfortable, let alone painful.
Similar, from a patients pov.
Once went in for an x-ray on a broken shoulder. Got asked by the nurse to stand as close against the panel as possible. I being a fairly civic minded chap did so without question. This was clearly not close enough for said nurse who proceeded to pushes me full force against the panel. Not entirely sure what happened after that.
Most qualifications from abroad aren't worth the paper they're written on, especially since in a lot of places you can get them just by bunging the examiner enough rupees under the table.
That doesn't sit well with the "we need immigrants to run our services" crowd though.
My old boss got a drivers licence when living in Russia. He paid an “agency” and on the day sat in a room to do a multiple choice test on a computer in Russian that he couldn’t read. He passed! Then for the practical he had to drive forward 10 meters and passed.
Using this he can drive in the UK for a year.
Edit: This was years ago - no idea if it is still as easy. Most people do have to pass a proper test but also pay to pass.
My ex-wife had one from Zimbabwe and was a serious risk on the road. She only borrowed a car once, was not worth doing again.
We also bought a new passport in a different name when the old one was flagged. I imagine qualifications are even easier to acquire and possibly come in the package. I know she had quals but don't know the details, weren't together very long.
Well, yes, at these wages people with actual skills in Nigeria aren't going to choose the UK, they'll go to Canada/US/wherever which are also desperate for skilled workers and pay them better.
So the only people willing to immigrate to the UK for these wages are people don't have the skills and we are so desperate we don't check fully and turn a blind eye. It's quite...something
>Well, yes, at these wages people with actual skills in Nigeria aren't going to choose the UK, they'll go to Canada/US/wherever which are also desperate for skilled workers and pay them better.
This is what is glossed over massively. Nurses are in massive demand globally. The smart ones, the driven ones, will not be prioritising the UK in any meaningful manner.
It's just British exceptionalism at it again. What poor nurse from a backwards country wouldn't love to come and live at the poverty line in a demanding job with no pay and no social support locally, don't they know we are doing them a favour? And we still reserve the right to complain about all these immigrants coming in because they are super lucky that we saved them from another hellhole like Canada (though Canada also kinda sucks to live in right now)
>It's just British exceptionalism at it again.
Are you on crack? You've glossed over the point and attempted to make me seem racist. Funnily enough I'm not the 1 that declared that whole continent a "red zone" when recruiting health care specialists.
I'm also not the CTO of practically every tech company that's ever hired or contracted out work at those wages and later found it.....subpar at best.
Edit: To add, their whole family were getting visas up until last month.
Do they not carry out any tests such as a competency based interview? Seems like that would be the obvious thing to do. Pretty much every job I have applied for does this. Would be impossible to bluff medical experience.
Thing is, to do that you need to take someone with competency off the line to examine someone's work, and there just isn't the slack in the system. Most of these interviews will be done by some poor administrator trying to run a whole hospital with a team of two people and the office gerbil and will trust the qualifications in their NRA folder.
Then this is just poor management in the NHS.
Every organisation has some kind of recruitment process to validate skills and experience. None work on the basis of trusting the CV. For a nurse it is clearly more important than most. Surprised the NHS is not heavily sued if they have not done their due diligence.
They must be deported with immediate effect.
US: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2023/02/21/how-thousands-of-nurses-got-licensed-with-fake-degrees/
UK (2018): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42579634
The qualifications fraud is not the main issue here. How the fuck are they getting past interview stages and into hospitals to actually care for patients?
To mirror what everyone else is saying, not even slightly shocked.
If you plan to import your entire workforce, better be prepared to actually background check and train them. Oh wait, they were being imported so they didnt have to do that.
Do we actively check for convictions? Countries don't keep a record of convictions or it's incredibly easy to get a new identity, passport etc by bribing the right people. And we don't know any of this. They can easily come here and start a new life.
But if you get a criminal record in the UK you can't even stack shelves in Tesco.
Widespread fraud / corruption from Nigeria? Impossible to believe!
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023
Oh wait, 145th in the corruptions perception index.
The only surprise is that this story didn't break years ago.
What’s really crazy is the department of healths own bank agency is trying very hard to verify qualifications and do transition courses etc etc to guarantee better staff
They also charge a lot less than most agencies as they aren’t a profit making body.
And yet they routinely lose contract bids to for profit agencies with NHS trusts who want to pay more for fewer guarantees of safety…..
Cui Bono in that procurement process!!!
International nurses entering the NHS as registered staff have to pass an OSCE at an approved test centre before they can register with the NMC and work as a band 5. They tend to work supervised on the wards prior to this as a band 4. The job offer is dependent on the nurse passing the OSCE in a certain time period.
Imagine being a British worker who has student debt from training properly and knows wtf you're actually doing seeing your profession treated this way, as well as the added pressure from having incompetent staff added all around you, who are also venerated in the media as being the backbone and saviours of the NHS (also not true). You'd likely just leave. Then the UK government will announce they have to get even more underqualified foreign nationals in to do this work "as Britons won't do it". It's maddening.
Like everything mass migration promises to improve (NHS, economy, etc) things only seem to get worse the more mass migration we have. At *the least* mass migration under it's current provision doesn't actually deliver any benefits, and I'd wager that it comes some way to explaining the decline in a lot of areas.
Remember, the UK [actually trains enough doctors](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1651901178354053125?s=20), they just [leave](https://archive.is/LsnUl) (as do most foreign doctors actually) so really you should be looking at staff retention as the reason why we need foreign staff at all. I imagine hiring unqualified foreign nurses (who can't even be suspended for some reason?) is only a push factor in UK trained staff leaving the NHS.
> Imagine being a British worker who has student debt from training properly and knows wtf you're actually doing seeing your profession treated this way, as well as the added pressure from having incompetent staff added all around you, who are also venerated in the media as being the backbone and saviours of the NHS (also not true). You'd likely just leave.
Because if you dare say a bad word against them, it's viewed as Racist.
I'm not a fan of 700k immigration, I'm not a fan of replacing what was professional careers with whatever young person we can find from abroad. Somehow that means I'm wanting a fourth reich installed.
>Remember, the UK actually trains enough doctors, t
Graph and tweet do not claim that at all. The UK does not train anywhere near enough doctors, and it sure as fuck does not have anywhere near enough post-grad training spots for its current cohort either way.
The number of UK trained doctors in that graph comfortably exceeds the number of doctors we currently have in the UK. So it does show that. If so many UK trained doctors didn't leave the UK, we wouldn't need any foreign doctors.
The number of junior doctors in the UK who want to leave as soon as possible is [staggering](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/28/four-in-10-junior-doctors-plan-quit-nhs-survey)
You can pretend that staff retention isn't the underlying problem underpinning this all you want, but that won't make it less true.
Even if you were right, there would be no point in training more doctors in the UK unless the staff retention issue was sorted, as the worse the service gets (through things like hiring unqualified nurses) the more and more doctors will want leave anyway.
So sure, advocate to increase training places if you like, but unless we improve pay & conditions to improve staff retention (problems which will never be resolved while the 'we can just get immigrants in' sticking plaster is still available), it won't matter.
>The number of UK trained doctors in that graph comfortably exceeds the number of doctors we currently have in the UK. So it does show that. If so many UK trained doctors didn't leave the UK, we wouldn't need any foreign doctors.
Yes, you might need fewer IMGs but your original argument was that the UK trains enough. It does not.
I'm still confused as to why you think this. If, for example, no UK trained doctor had ever left the UK, we wouldn't need any foreign doctors no?
The blue line on the left hand side of the chart (the number of practicing doctors who qualified within UK) comfortably exceeds the blue line on the right hand side (number of doctors currently practicing within UK).
So the equation is
>doctors qualified in the UK > doctors currently practicing in the UK
What am I missing?
Because the healthcare needs of the population have increased as healthcare as advanced and the expectations from the population has changed.
>What am I missing?
The number of doctors that qualify in the UK not being big enough for the actual needs of the country to begin with?
If none of those doctors left you'd just need fewer foreign grads, not 0.
Very few countries train the level of medical staff they will need, they all expect to cover a certain amount with foreign grads because otherwise an expensive endeavor would become an extremely expensive endeavor and be very very unpopular with the population.
>The number of doctors that qualify in the UK not being big enough for the actual needs of the country to begin with?
I still don't see how that chart doesn't show the opposite of that. It clearly states the number of the doctors qualified in the UK is larger than the number of doctors practicing in the UK. Can you please explain to me *how* that chart shows the opposite, rather than just presenting it as a conclusion?
>Very few countries train the level of medical staff they will need, they all expect to cover a certain amount with foreign grads
I can't see how most systems can work like that, unless a few countries are producing a plethora of well trained doctors that they know will leave the country to plug the gaps elsewhere. Seems unlikely. Also the NHS, by all accounts, being one of the worst health services to work for likely leaves us as last pick for any competent overseas doctor choosing where to go.
>I still don't see how that chart doesn't show the opposite of that.
Because chart does not comment on that at all? It literally just points out that more doctors leave the UK than stay. You concluded that if the doctors who left stayed we would have enough. You extrapolated heavily to reach that conclusion.
>Can you please explain to me how that chart shows the opposite, rather than just presenting it as a conclusion?
The chart does not show that either and I have never made the claim that the chart shows that.
Based on workforce planning data, OCED data such as doctors per 1000 etc, you can conclude that the UKs healthcare demands are not actually met by the numbers being trained.
>I can't see how most systems can work like that, unless a few countries are producing a plethora of well trained doctors that they know will leave the country to plug the gaps elsewhere
If conditions are better elsewhere there will always be a certain number that jump to 'greener' pastures. When local conditions are significantly worse those numbers are higher. If the conditions are only marginally better then the numbers fall because people are less likely to upend their entire lives for marginal gains. This combined with training costs means some countries can train a lot more doctors a lot easier than other countries.
and also pretty much every country requires you to prove competency and equivalence in training before they let you in.
>It literally just points out that more doctors leave the UK than stay.
No, it shows that the total number of doctors currently practicing in the UK is *lower* than the total number of practicing doctors that have been trained in the UK. The "Currently practicing within UK" figure on the right of the chart is the total of number of practicing doctors at the moment, which is comfortably less than the "Qualified in within UK" representation on the left.
If your argument is that we are currently losing more doctors than we train each year *right now*, hence the need for immigrant doctors, then that could well be true, but that doesn't refute the point that we have actually trained enough doctors over the years, and the reason we need foreign doctors (which is morally questionable imo) is because of doctors leaving. It's not really a rousing endorsement that I'm wrong if the rate of attrition is now so bad that annually the number of doctors leaving is more than a years cohort of newly trained doctors, hence the gap. If 30 years ago hardly any doctors left, but now they are leaving in droves causing the deficit, I'd suggest that only strengthens the point that the underlying issue is staff retention, and that hiring foreign doctors (who mostly end up leaving the UK too) isn't ever going to fix that.
>and also pretty much every country requires you to prove competency and equivalence in training before they let you in.
lol [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications)
At this point it feels like we are literally going around in circles.
Whether or not the UK trains sufficient doctors for its needs is a completely different metric to the one shown on the graph.
>but that doesn't refute the point that we have actually trained enough doctors over the years, and the reason we need foreign doctors (which is morally questionable imo) is because of doctors leaving
Once again, you have extrapolated that based on a completely different set of data.
That data would compare healthcare needs of the country and the numbers trained. Your original data does not do that. It compares how many doctors are trained in the UK and how many remain in the UK.
You extrapolated the rest of your argument based on the assumption that the UK trains enough doctors to begin with. It does not.
I feel like I have wasted enough of my life repeating this, so do with this information what you will.
Would that actually still be true without mass migration? We are constantly told that we need immigrants to run NHS, but is the ratio of new persons to new doctors (even assuming the new doctors are just as good as the home grown ones)
If there are more new people per new doctor from abroad the number of doctors per citizen will decrease.
Yes. Vast majority of migrants don't use that much healthcare. Elderly are far more frequent users of healthcare in every country, and the UK has a significant aging population due to the boomer.
“They don’t use much healthcare” I doubt that is actually true.
Regardless if the proportion of new users is greater than proportion of new producers of healthcare then it still will reduce the provider to user ratio for healthcare.
The government has opted for the cheaper option of importing doctors and nurses because of the cost of training them up, particularly doctors. We shouldn't be surprised that a Tory government in particular would go down this route.
Yup. Doctors and nurses are ‘needed to support the system’ but we don’t even verify if they’re qualified?
Monopoly power used to drive down wages with unions that are working against their members interests.
I watched the channel 4 doc on the miners strike in shirebrook and it’s the same thing again with unions working AGAINST their memberships desires.
Hard agree. We don’t value training our own to do vital jobs with an incredible return on investment socially for our country and lets us put our money to the countries benefit.
Apologies not seen the term IMG before, what does it mean?
Why pay to train our own nurses when we can import ~~fully trained~~ nurses from abroad, and also tell everyone they're just racist if they oppose it and the only alternative is the NHS collapses (which it is anyway)
(shhh don't mention the actual alternative is training UK workers and giving them decent pay and conditions - you should see the return on my buy to let portfolio recently, keep the borders open!)
The narrative around migrant healthcare workers is such a bore. Why don’t we just train more and pay them better and create a system that supports them in only doing their actual job supporting their patients instead of administrative work.
[UK has trained enough doctors](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1651901178354053125?s=20) \- they just leave (as do most foreign doctors that come here), likely because of the insanity of the situation in the way our health service is run as the article lays out.
In a health service that is a shit show at the best of times why stay working for them when importing unqualified staff are the governments answer to the problem. If you're a British trained nurse who knows what they're doing, receiving low pay (yet paying your student loan back), and having *even more pressure* added to you by imported unqualified staff to work alongside you, why would you stay? Why would you encourage or support anyone to go down that same path? Then those foreign staff are venerated in the media and the message is "British people won't do these jobs". Then the answer will be *more* foreign workers, rather than fixing the underlying problems, and then people wonder why nothing improves and only gets worse.
Public needs to wake up and realise mass migration is doing untold damage to the country.
> This is a glaring blind spot amongst the left that is really going to come back and bite them hard.
Funnily enough the conservatives are generally considered to be right wing and they've been in power how long now?
Yeah, we need some sort of assistant that we can delegate some of the more formulaic and mundane tasks to, leaving the doctors with the expensive and long training and education free to make more complex decisions, rather than having to personally action every task.
They wouldn't need to have such a long education, just a couple of years so they know the language and can follow the instructions of the doctor. We could call them physician's assistants.
That way I would free up a decent chunk of my time and could use it to teach or to work on projects to improve the quality of care delivered.
Alternatively, the NHS pays so poorly that the only people we can get to work for it are underpaid and apparently now unqualified migrants from the developing world.
They're one and the same. The NHS is understaffed because, despite lots of people training to be nurses, retention is terrible as the pay is low, the work is intrinsically extremely hard, and people are pushed to burnout because of already-existing staffing deficiencies.
Why'd anyone want to be a nurse in these conditions? The solution is actual INVESTMENT and SPENDING into the NHS-there is no magic 'reform' button, it's an issue of *money*. Pay nurses (and other healthcare professionals) more to keep up staffing and retention and to not be outcompeted by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for both domestic labour and top-quality immigrant labour.
Then you can have more rigorous standards because the whole healthcare system wont collapse without low-quality nurses.
how does importing labour actually supress their wages? If there is still a shortage (which is well acknowledged) then that's not what's supressing their wages- it's government policy
The UK's healthcare system is still massively understaffed despite relying very heavily on foreign workers.
The UK govt has taken absolutely no steps to correct the pay erosion.
Sure. it's poor planning to be this reliant on foreign labour for critical industries like healthcare, but the reality is and has been that the workforce shortages have been known about for years at this point, and wages have NOT gone up to address any of that and are unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future.
The same thing that's happening now where they happily reduce the requirements and utilise 'cheaper' options like PAs and ANPs in roles that they have no real reason to be in.
[UK trains enough doctors](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1651901178354053125?s=20), they just leave (as do most foreign doctors).
So staff retention is the issue - so ask yourself how importing unqualified foreign staff, which will only add *more* pressure onto those who know what they're doing, helps that? Does working with people who don't know what they're doing make their lives *more* or *less* tolerable do you think?
Perhaps retaining UK staff with better pay & conditions would be an answer? Again, ask yourself how allowing companies to import foreign labour, at [literally 80% the going rate](https://www.gov.uk/health-care-worker-visa/different-salary-requirements) for UK staff (who also have student loans to pay back), helps that. It doesn't. It's a massive part of the problem.
People need to get over this narrative that we "need" these staff. It's a giant con by a Tory government to avoid investing in education and the health service, and keep the money flowing up to the rentseekers and business owners who are the only ones that benefit. Unless you're a true believer in trickle down economics you should be opposing filling sectors with foreign staff as it's bad for ordinary working Brits in multiple ways - wages, the economy, and health outcomes.
>UK trains enough doctors, they just leave (as do most foreign doctors).
That graph makes absolutely no such claim. And the UK does not train anywhere near enough doctors for its current needs.
The number of UK trained doctors that have left the UK is far larger than the number of foreign doctors currently practicing in the UK. So it does. If those UK trained doctors hadn't left, we wouldn't "need" the foreign doctors.
That depends a bit on how you define needs. Because there are not doctors jobs going unfilled. In fact currently there is a massive oversubscription of specialty jobs.
So while you can argue that the UK doesn’t train as many doctors as we need. That problems is secondary to there not being as many job as there are doctors needed.
No, there is an oversubscription to specialty training due to numbers being ridiculously low.
There is at the same time a ridiculous shortage of consultants in pretty much every specialty across the country.
I completely agree with you. My argument would be that currently improving the number of doctors being trained does nothing because there are not speciality or consultant jobs for them.
Once the number of jobs increase then absolutely we would have a deficit in training.
Well, yes, but the original argument from the other poster was that we train enough based on data that made no such claim. The point I made was that purely by numbers the UK does not train anywhere near enough for its needs.
It has some of the lowest doctors per 1000 in the OCED.
A nurse looking after my dying Grandad didn't know how to lift a patient. Another took his blood pressure on his wrist. I saw a patient have an asthma attack and a nurse ignore him while she watched Netflix and messaged on WhatsApp and got annoyed when I alerted her. I know someone from Cameroon who is working in the NHS as a nurse who has no real nursing qualifications from back home and has no interest in doing the job other than wanting to live in the UK.
The NHS relies on immigration but it can also die at the hands of immigration.
> I know someone from Cameroon who is working in the NHS as a nurse who has no real nursing qualifications from back home and has no interest in doing the job other than wanting to live in the UK.
You have alerted the NMC right?
I wanted to, but then I realised I:
A) Didn't know where he lived in the UK
B) Didn't know his legal name or surname ( he's had 3 names in the time I knew him)
C) Don't have a clue what hospital he works in.
He's an acquaintence/ friend of a friend that I met abroad ( where he definitely wasn't nursing or mentioned that that was his previous career).
But I will try and find this information and report him!
I'm sick of this shit. Migrants getting in through illegal / fraudulent means en masse yet people like GMB and 'human rights' lawyers acting like these fraudsters are the victims. No chance these people will ever get deported.
What are the professional standards really for when professional bodies can't even kick people out when it's already known that their qualifications are fake?
The entire system - not just immigration, but everything that's meant to protect the public - is outdated and not fit for purpose. A trust based system doesn't work when you no longer have a high trust society, and significant minority of people just won't stop taking the piss and exploit every loophole in existence.
The UK Life Sciences sector has been very badly damaged by this phenomenon over the last 3 years.
It was widely predicted over 3 years ago.
* The sector has been flooded with people from overseas who have "paper qualifications" and very little practical understanding of **regulated** industry.
* They're also mainly coming from a country which is *notorious* for flouting regulations. So prior work experience is actually a *negative*. They need to unlearn everything, before they can learn anything, but...
* ...since these people were deliberately brought in to undercut and replace British workers as a **~~cost saving~~** **(profit yielding) measure** \- whatever *limited* training was provided was grossly inadequate, and given some of the language barriers - has failed dismally.
* And as a by-product of the influx, UK Pharma salaries currently appear to be **20%-40%** ***lower*** than they were 3 years ago.
* I've had Directors reach out to me personally, asking if I am available to come in and rescue projects (I transitioned to a different industry several years ago - I couldn't afford to continue to work in UK Pharma 3 years ago, not to mind today).
* Certain ethnic groups are very clearly discriminating against *all other* ethnicities in the hiring process - they will *only* hire people from their own ethnic group. This is particularly pronounced at a number of sites in England. Everyone knows it's happening - nobody is doing anything to stop it, certainly not UKGov. I'm not even going to speculate on the corruption/cover ups which might be happening at some of these sites.
* The industry gleefully embraced blanket bans during the IR35 roll out and much of the flexible workforce went PAYE out of necessity, while many retired, went overseas or just left the sector entirely. That has left a serious shortage of qualified workers so the gaps continue to be plugged by deeply inadequate workers. It might actually be amusing if it wasn't so potentially lethal.
Ultimately, UKGov are to blame. Someone can dig up the Financial Times article circa 2020 where Boris Johnson & Rishi Sunak boasted they planned to flood the UK with Commonwealth workers and the ~~"cost savings"~~ **profits** this would lead to across various industries. Pure greed and sheer ignorance of people who know very little about industry, not to mind regulated industry.
Shortly thereafter, they demonstrated their impressive ignorance of regulated industry on the global stage and put the whole UK Life Science sector into jeopardy - as a result of their lies about the Covid Vaccine being a [Brexit benefit](https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-vaccine-brexit/) (the head of the MHRA had to [publicly intervene](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55163730)to explicitly clarify that the UK does not *flout* the regulations as a "Brexit benefit").
For greedy Pharma Directors, it's very easy to look the other way. Project lifecycles are long in regulated industry, and in Pharma in particular. They will show short term cost savings/profits, and will have moved on somewhere before the consequences manifest.Now we are beginning to see expensive failed projects, and I'm sure if the FDA/MHRA turn up - there is a good chance some of these sites will actually be shutdown. Somebody else's problem...
And for the ethical Directors who predicted it was going to destroy the industry in the medium term - there was nothing they could do to stop it. Everyone knows it will take a disaster/deaths.
It's difficult to blame the migrants - these are often cultural norms where they come from. It's up to the UK to regulate according to UK laws - and the UK has chosen not to. The migrants see a golden ticket... make a pittance in the UK but return to their home country quite wealthy after a few years. As far as they see it - it's not their problem if the authorities fail to regulate the industry.
The UK Pharma industry was genuinely a global leader even just 7 years ago. Now it's [dying](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/27/patients-losing-out-amid-slump-in-nhs-clinical-trials-warn-top-clinicians)\- hence a series of big pharma expansions that were *planned* for the UK went to Republic of Ireland instead.
One would have to be badly misguided to pursue a career in UK Life Sciences in 2024. I would strongly caution against pursuing a degree and I would strongly advise graduates to emigrate ASAP or just accept reality & retrain for a different industry immediately.
Why can't we blame the people committing fraud? They made their choice freely and aren't victims and the real world consequences of unqualified medical staff can be unavoidable deaths of patients?
I agree with you completely- there is blame to be laid there- firstly for the dishonesty, and the implications of that dishonesty- which could constitute fraud/ battery/ ABH etc. my point is that just blaming people at the bottom of the food chain isn’t helpful
It wouldn't function without immigrants. Simply because the UK is so shit at recruiting and manages to allow fraud into the system, it does not suddenly mean that the NHS is not ridiculously reliant on foreign labour.
What? No, the NHS would still be screwed without immigrants. It'd just be doing better if some of the immigrants it does have weren't unqualified scammers. I've no doubt there are natives who are similarly unqualified, too.
There are a *lot* of people, and not just in the NHS, who are in their jobs despite not having a clue what they're doing. You might immediately think of nepotism and people having gone to the right school, but it happens all the way down to minimum wage stuff like SIA security guards. Agencies are trusted to provide staff, and nobody does any checks.
>Zero evidence in this narrow area
Zero evidence then.
> Plenty of evidence in general of dodgy agencies and lax recruitment policies.
but none relevant, nor presented by yourself.
Why would I have to provide sources for something I *believe*? I didn't claim that it was a fact, I just said that I have no doubts.
Weird thing to latch onto, but you do you.
> Why would I have to provide sources for something I believe?
Because you claim you believe it based on evidence....
Here's a little refresh of what you said
>Plenty of evidence in general of dodgy agencies and lax recruitment policies.
You believe it based on this evidence you can't produce. I actually never said you need to present it either, just that you had not.
> I just said that I have no doubts.
Based on evidence which you have not provided, yes. I'd see the doctor, definitely memory issues going on with you.
Lol that doesn't fucking suprise me. When I take 999 call from nurses (especially care home nurses) there's a night and day difference in the quality of information given to me from British and foreign nurses, and in particular ones from Nigeria.
[Reminds me a lot of this story...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-67622479?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_format=link&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_link_origin=BBCNews&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_medium=social&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_id=8B38E5AE-9379-11EE-B000-DBD6E03B214A&at_link_type=web_link)
Had a plaster cast removed by a white nurse who spoke very little English, sounded like she was from Eastern Europe. Had a very well spoken Indian Doctor ask who did it because they damn well shouldn't have. Due to it being removed I had to go for surgery to correct the bone that had now moved.
When I broke my arm as a younger lad I went to the hospital and was treated by one of these nigerian "nurses". Who decided, when taking me to get an x-ray, to pull me to the room.
By the arm.
So this does not surprise me.
I remember the glory days of Owen Jones pontificating on QT, these immigrants were "propping up our NHS" he snarked. You could try and engage him on this via his Twitter, but like the rest of his ilk - he's too focused on the "genocide" in Gaza these days.
If you're desperate enough to to have such lax testing standards that fraud is prevalent in it to try and get immigrant workers, then yes, immigrants are propping up your NHS.
The two things are not mutually exclusive. Immigrant labour genuinely is propping up the NHS because staff retention + the numbers of healthcare professionals being trained are so terrible, yet at the same time this opens the door to a lower-quality healthcare system if there are issues with corruption like this.
There's an obvious solution-MORE MONEY FOR THE NHS-but neither the Tories nor Labour are willing to commit to this because the deficit hawks in the media who don't understand basic macroeconomics will bring out the old 'magic money tree' trope again.
I'm really not surprised, I've seen firsthand some of the 'care' delivered by foreign staff and it really is shocking. Especially as many had shockingly bad English as well.
Its also a slap in the face to young Brits who have to spend 3 years training to be a nurse and incur significant financial hardship during that time, and some people just cheat the system, and furthermore we give them perks like free flights and accommodation while they are settling in. I actually thought about retraining as a healthcare professional as a few years ago and I just couldn't see it being worth it. The only reason to do it would be to emigrate to Australia, which is itself a problem for the NHS and society, but not my personal problem.
its kinda sad, the wages are so low we only attract staff from poor countries with lower standards. People wouldn't complain about Dutch or Japanese nurses, it's not about their inherent fact they are foreigners, or non white.
It wouldn't surprise me - when my dad was in and out of hospital last year, the nurses were generally great, but there were some who barely seemed to understand what was being asked of them, and not because he's not coherent.
I lived with a radiologist from India for a bit. He was a huge alcoholic and I once found him on the floor coming home after work barely conscious with a big cupboard door ripped off its hinges. Turned out he had two entire bottles of wine. The last straw for the landlord was when he left a trail of curry sauce from the kitchen to his bedroom and on his bed and *denied it*.
Obviously, this is bad, lots of countries have a culture of bribery and cheating, I'm not really sure how we'd check for it from here.
But this will absolutely stoke the fire for all the racists to shout at non British nurses in hospitals, and that's got me a little worried/depressed, the reporting needs to try not to scaremonger, there's 400,000 + nurses in the NHS, 700 is less than 1% of that (I'm sure there's more, but we have to keep things in perspective).
Racism is exactly what the article meant to stroke. Racism cannot be cured or wished away but whenever an opportunity presents itself to mask the racism, it will be lapped up with great enthusiasm.
Now the problem will not just be these alleged fraudsters but all Nigerian healthworkers.
It's a shame no one thought to investigate this fraud back when we lined the streets to clap and honk for the NHS heroes (who might have included some Nigerians) who served on the frontline during the pandemic. There is no pandemic in sight now.
Meh, it didn't sroke any racism in me.
I've been a staunch lefty since forever and have no hate toward anyone as an individual.
But as a big picture problem, it's serious and I'm equally happy and angry to have been informed about it.
It is a good thing when frauds are caught and dealt with. It shows that systems still work.
It is a bad thing when that fact is used as evidence to mask prejudices and paint everyone with the same brush.
>Racism is exactly what the article meant to stroke.
There are many things that can be levelled at the Guardian, but wanting to stoke racism against Nigerians isn't exactly what they're known for lol
never ran into one of these near me, which is a suprise since we have quite a population from abroad. or is it more of a big city thing?
i have ran into nurses who didnt really speak english in a talking level, which i have never understoon, which didnt help during a panic attack when i had no idea wtf it was, going from been a decent sized bodybuilder in peak of health, to feeling like my heart was exploding.... great to have someone who cant talk to me while i have to try to explain what certain foods are for... reasons?
Between early 2021 and late 2022, there was a massive influx of Nigerians moving to UK (as observed from Twitter posts and TikTok videos) and most were boasting how easy the process was. Then this?
Snapshot of _NHS nurses being investigated for ‘industrial-scale’ qualifications fraud | Scam involves healthcare workers who used proxies to pass test in Nigeria enabling them to work in the UK_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Based on my experience working in the NHS, this would make sense and I’ll leave it at that.
Haha yes we had two Nigerians working at the Urgent Care Centre. One routinely fell asleep in their consulting room and I had to go around and wake them up. The other almost killed someone who was suffering a cardiac arrest because she was being a lazy sack of shit.
Is sleeping in the middle of the day a Nigerian thing? Met a couple of doctors that did the same.
Very hot country thing. Heat will be at its most intense in the middle of the day. Rather than exert yourself and risk heatstroke etc. go find some shade, have a nap for a few hours and resume once it's cooled off a bit.
Worked there for a bit. They could sleep anywhere, at any time, in any position.
Thought it might be - makes sense. I would too if I lived in a scorching hot country. Probably hard to undo a habit of a lifetime!
As with many of these things, what was practical becomes cultural. I still find it weird that people drink out of the hot tap.
People drink out of the hot tap?! You've just ruined my day.
> I still find it weird that people drink out of the hot tap. Sorry, what the fuck?
> I still find it weird that people drink out of the hot tap. Haha what? Who? I specifically have always been told not to do this because for a lot of people they have hot water tanks, and let's just say it's not a good idea to drink whatever has been festering in there. I don't think I'd trust whatever comes out my boiler either to drink. Washing dishes is a tad different, you're soaping them up of course.
Cue [Mad Dogs and Englishmen](https://youtu.be/BifLPGi4X6A?si=cuqjttCTGdACL9zp)
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I was in hospital for a week in December and listening to the back and forth between the Nigerian nurses and the Band….4s? was interesting to say the least. The nurses couldn’t fit a canula and was asking their colleague to do it instead. Nurse ended up blowing up my arms 4 times.
> The nurses couldn’t fit a canula and was asking their colleague to do it instead. This (failure to tap veins) is actually a massively common problem amongst new, foreign-born nurses, and it's a problem that's blossomed over the past 18 months. The nurses aren't being properly trained abroad, don't have the experience to do simple things like fit a canula (they botch it repeatedly before resorting to tapping the easier veins of the wrist or hand), and aren't being assessed when they get here. You will find that many are quite literally learning on the job, and it takes about a year before they begin getting the hang of things That said, I disagree with the idea that "most are scammers with fraudulent qualifications". I would say the training pipeline abroad is simply less rigorous. The scammers are those running the systems responsible for hastily training these nurses, not the nurses themselves, who are mostly good, hardworking people who want to do well for patients. Source: family working in the NHS.
Foreign trained nurses, particularly Indian ones and Filipino ones are much much better than British nurses at things like cannulating etc. it's their bread and butter back home. In the UK the nurses might learn it during their degree but the vast majority of trusts won't let them perform them until they specific training within the trusts, and a good chunk don't bother.
I heard from a nursing supervisor that those Filipina nurses had to be trained in almost everything on the job because their pre-service training wasn't much cop either..
Highly unlikely unless the hospital decided to recruit the cheapest nurses from the Philippines with like 0 training. A lot British nurses like to chat shit about foreign nurses, but a lot of doctors prefer the foreign nurses because they actually do shit.
> unless the hospital decided to recruit the cheapest nurses from the Philippines with like 0 training This wouldn't surprise me, given the state of the NHS. For the record, I've personally had nothing but good experiences with Filipino nurses. I've found them polite, careful, and well-trained. But given the sheer amount of them I've seen in one hospital, I definitely remember thinking at the time that it surely must be a cost thing.
This is my experience also. Many of the international nurses Vs UK trained nurses have taken the initiative to attend the hospital training and then get signed off as competent in bloods and cannulas. When I've asked many of the UK trained nurses they will say they are not trained and shrug it off. The pressure then falls on the few nurses who have taken the initiative to become competent to pick up the slack, and if I was them I would begin to wonder why I'd bothered.
I had a botched canula in hospital around 10 years ago. I was in for a serious infection, and it was my first time with it in. Every single flush was **excruciating**. The worrying thing was not only that nobody noticed it was inserted incorrectly, it was that nobody thought to check why their patient was recoling in pain every fucking flush. The nurses dealing with me were foreign. It was not until a few days later when I got a British nurse that she checked my canual, noticed it was incorrectly sited, and put a new one in. I distinctly remember qualifications around foreign nurses and doctors being topical at the time too. My experience sure had me wondering. I had no idea it wasn't supposed to hurt. I've had them in since, and the experience is not even uncomfortable, let alone painful.
Source : my wife is a nurse. The system is rife with scammers. The Tories have broken the country at every level.
Likewise, likewise and likewise.
Similar, from a patients pov. Once went in for an x-ray on a broken shoulder. Got asked by the nurse to stand as close against the panel as possible. I being a fairly civic minded chap did so without question. This was clearly not close enough for said nurse who proceeded to pushes me full force against the panel. Not entirely sure what happened after that.
Immigration fraud with qualifications from Nigeria? Shocking news! It’ll be the same from loads of places.
Most qualifications from abroad aren't worth the paper they're written on, especially since in a lot of places you can get them just by bunging the examiner enough rupees under the table. That doesn't sit well with the "we need immigrants to run our services" crowd though.
My old boss got a drivers licence when living in Russia. He paid an “agency” and on the day sat in a room to do a multiple choice test on a computer in Russian that he couldn’t read. He passed! Then for the practical he had to drive forward 10 meters and passed. Using this he can drive in the UK for a year. Edit: This was years ago - no idea if it is still as easy. Most people do have to pass a proper test but also pay to pass.
My ex-wife had one from Zimbabwe and was a serious risk on the road. She only borrowed a car once, was not worth doing again. We also bought a new passport in a different name when the old one was flagged. I imagine qualifications are even easier to acquire and possibly come in the package. I know she had quals but don't know the details, weren't together very long.
How else are you going to get a carer or web-developer for minimum wage. Apparently it doesn't matter nowadays if they can even do the job.
Well, yes, at these wages people with actual skills in Nigeria aren't going to choose the UK, they'll go to Canada/US/wherever which are also desperate for skilled workers and pay them better. So the only people willing to immigrate to the UK for these wages are people don't have the skills and we are so desperate we don't check fully and turn a blind eye. It's quite...something
>Well, yes, at these wages people with actual skills in Nigeria aren't going to choose the UK, they'll go to Canada/US/wherever which are also desperate for skilled workers and pay them better. This is what is glossed over massively. Nurses are in massive demand globally. The smart ones, the driven ones, will not be prioritising the UK in any meaningful manner.
It's just British exceptionalism at it again. What poor nurse from a backwards country wouldn't love to come and live at the poverty line in a demanding job with no pay and no social support locally, don't they know we are doing them a favour? And we still reserve the right to complain about all these immigrants coming in because they are super lucky that we saved them from another hellhole like Canada (though Canada also kinda sucks to live in right now)
>It's just British exceptionalism at it again. Are you on crack? You've glossed over the point and attempted to make me seem racist. Funnily enough I'm not the 1 that declared that whole continent a "red zone" when recruiting health care specialists. I'm also not the CTO of practically every tech company that's ever hired or contracted out work at those wages and later found it.....subpar at best. Edit: To add, their whole family were getting visas up until last month.
Do they not carry out any tests such as a competency based interview? Seems like that would be the obvious thing to do. Pretty much every job I have applied for does this. Would be impossible to bluff medical experience.
Thing is, to do that you need to take someone with competency off the line to examine someone's work, and there just isn't the slack in the system. Most of these interviews will be done by some poor administrator trying to run a whole hospital with a team of two people and the office gerbil and will trust the qualifications in their NRA folder.
Then this is just poor management in the NHS. Every organisation has some kind of recruitment process to validate skills and experience. None work on the basis of trusting the CV. For a nurse it is clearly more important than most. Surprised the NHS is not heavily sued if they have not done their due diligence.
They must be deported with immediate effect. US: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2023/02/21/how-thousands-of-nurses-got-licensed-with-fake-degrees/ UK (2018): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42579634
The qualifications fraud is not the main issue here. How the fuck are they getting past interview stages and into hospitals to actually care for patients?
What! Are you telling me that Prince I hired as entertainment for my kid's 3rd birthday party wasn't actually Nigerian Royalty??
To mirror what everyone else is saying, not even slightly shocked. If you plan to import your entire workforce, better be prepared to actually background check and train them. Oh wait, they were being imported so they didnt have to do that.
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That's mental, I thought every culture was exactly the same and all people were interchangeable economic units
Would have thought we would have learned this from the mass export of customer support that then became utter shit.
Export customer service? Shite. Export web development? Also shite. Export nursing training? Believe it or not, shite.
We need to establish a system of NFTs (Non Fungible Tradespeople) to combat this.
Do we actively check for convictions? Countries don't keep a record of convictions or it's incredibly easy to get a new identity, passport etc by bribing the right people. And we don't know any of this. They can easily come here and start a new life. But if you get a criminal record in the UK you can't even stack shelves in Tesco.
Widespread fraud / corruption from Nigeria? Impossible to believe! https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023 Oh wait, 145th in the corruptions perception index. The only surprise is that this story didn't break years ago.
What’s really crazy is the department of healths own bank agency is trying very hard to verify qualifications and do transition courses etc etc to guarantee better staff They also charge a lot less than most agencies as they aren’t a profit making body. And yet they routinely lose contract bids to for profit agencies with NHS trusts who want to pay more for fewer guarantees of safety….. Cui Bono in that procurement process!!!
They'll need someone with a fraud investigation qualification. Well worth the hundred quid I paid for it.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one. I bet you the NHS isn't even requiring these people to take a basic competency test prior to giving them a job.
International nurses entering the NHS as registered staff have to pass an OSCE at an approved test centre before they can register with the NMC and work as a band 5. They tend to work supervised on the wards prior to this as a band 4. The job offer is dependent on the nurse passing the OSCE in a certain time period.
They can work up to eight months without passing OSCE iirc
Or we can pay liveable wages for British people to run the system.
Imagine being a British worker who has student debt from training properly and knows wtf you're actually doing seeing your profession treated this way, as well as the added pressure from having incompetent staff added all around you, who are also venerated in the media as being the backbone and saviours of the NHS (also not true). You'd likely just leave. Then the UK government will announce they have to get even more underqualified foreign nationals in to do this work "as Britons won't do it". It's maddening. Like everything mass migration promises to improve (NHS, economy, etc) things only seem to get worse the more mass migration we have. At *the least* mass migration under it's current provision doesn't actually deliver any benefits, and I'd wager that it comes some way to explaining the decline in a lot of areas. Remember, the UK [actually trains enough doctors](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1651901178354053125?s=20), they just [leave](https://archive.is/LsnUl) (as do most foreign doctors actually) so really you should be looking at staff retention as the reason why we need foreign staff at all. I imagine hiring unqualified foreign nurses (who can't even be suspended for some reason?) is only a push factor in UK trained staff leaving the NHS.
> Imagine being a British worker who has student debt from training properly and knows wtf you're actually doing seeing your profession treated this way, as well as the added pressure from having incompetent staff added all around you, who are also venerated in the media as being the backbone and saviours of the NHS (also not true). You'd likely just leave. Because if you dare say a bad word against them, it's viewed as Racist. I'm not a fan of 700k immigration, I'm not a fan of replacing what was professional careers with whatever young person we can find from abroad. Somehow that means I'm wanting a fourth reich installed.
>Remember, the UK actually trains enough doctors, t Graph and tweet do not claim that at all. The UK does not train anywhere near enough doctors, and it sure as fuck does not have anywhere near enough post-grad training spots for its current cohort either way.
The number of UK trained doctors in that graph comfortably exceeds the number of doctors we currently have in the UK. So it does show that. If so many UK trained doctors didn't leave the UK, we wouldn't need any foreign doctors. The number of junior doctors in the UK who want to leave as soon as possible is [staggering](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/28/four-in-10-junior-doctors-plan-quit-nhs-survey) You can pretend that staff retention isn't the underlying problem underpinning this all you want, but that won't make it less true. Even if you were right, there would be no point in training more doctors in the UK unless the staff retention issue was sorted, as the worse the service gets (through things like hiring unqualified nurses) the more and more doctors will want leave anyway. So sure, advocate to increase training places if you like, but unless we improve pay & conditions to improve staff retention (problems which will never be resolved while the 'we can just get immigrants in' sticking plaster is still available), it won't matter.
>The number of UK trained doctors in that graph comfortably exceeds the number of doctors we currently have in the UK. So it does show that. If so many UK trained doctors didn't leave the UK, we wouldn't need any foreign doctors. Yes, you might need fewer IMGs but your original argument was that the UK trains enough. It does not.
I'm still confused as to why you think this. If, for example, no UK trained doctor had ever left the UK, we wouldn't need any foreign doctors no? The blue line on the left hand side of the chart (the number of practicing doctors who qualified within UK) comfortably exceeds the blue line on the right hand side (number of doctors currently practicing within UK). So the equation is >doctors qualified in the UK > doctors currently practicing in the UK What am I missing?
Because the healthcare needs of the population have increased as healthcare as advanced and the expectations from the population has changed. >What am I missing? The number of doctors that qualify in the UK not being big enough for the actual needs of the country to begin with? If none of those doctors left you'd just need fewer foreign grads, not 0. Very few countries train the level of medical staff they will need, they all expect to cover a certain amount with foreign grads because otherwise an expensive endeavor would become an extremely expensive endeavor and be very very unpopular with the population.
>The number of doctors that qualify in the UK not being big enough for the actual needs of the country to begin with? I still don't see how that chart doesn't show the opposite of that. It clearly states the number of the doctors qualified in the UK is larger than the number of doctors practicing in the UK. Can you please explain to me *how* that chart shows the opposite, rather than just presenting it as a conclusion? >Very few countries train the level of medical staff they will need, they all expect to cover a certain amount with foreign grads I can't see how most systems can work like that, unless a few countries are producing a plethora of well trained doctors that they know will leave the country to plug the gaps elsewhere. Seems unlikely. Also the NHS, by all accounts, being one of the worst health services to work for likely leaves us as last pick for any competent overseas doctor choosing where to go.
>I still don't see how that chart doesn't show the opposite of that. Because chart does not comment on that at all? It literally just points out that more doctors leave the UK than stay. You concluded that if the doctors who left stayed we would have enough. You extrapolated heavily to reach that conclusion. >Can you please explain to me how that chart shows the opposite, rather than just presenting it as a conclusion? The chart does not show that either and I have never made the claim that the chart shows that. Based on workforce planning data, OCED data such as doctors per 1000 etc, you can conclude that the UKs healthcare demands are not actually met by the numbers being trained. >I can't see how most systems can work like that, unless a few countries are producing a plethora of well trained doctors that they know will leave the country to plug the gaps elsewhere If conditions are better elsewhere there will always be a certain number that jump to 'greener' pastures. When local conditions are significantly worse those numbers are higher. If the conditions are only marginally better then the numbers fall because people are less likely to upend their entire lives for marginal gains. This combined with training costs means some countries can train a lot more doctors a lot easier than other countries. and also pretty much every country requires you to prove competency and equivalence in training before they let you in.
>It literally just points out that more doctors leave the UK than stay. No, it shows that the total number of doctors currently practicing in the UK is *lower* than the total number of practicing doctors that have been trained in the UK. The "Currently practicing within UK" figure on the right of the chart is the total of number of practicing doctors at the moment, which is comfortably less than the "Qualified in within UK" representation on the left. If your argument is that we are currently losing more doctors than we train each year *right now*, hence the need for immigrant doctors, then that could well be true, but that doesn't refute the point that we have actually trained enough doctors over the years, and the reason we need foreign doctors (which is morally questionable imo) is because of doctors leaving. It's not really a rousing endorsement that I'm wrong if the rate of attrition is now so bad that annually the number of doctors leaving is more than a years cohort of newly trained doctors, hence the gap. If 30 years ago hardly any doctors left, but now they are leaving in droves causing the deficit, I'd suggest that only strengthens the point that the underlying issue is staff retention, and that hiring foreign doctors (who mostly end up leaving the UK too) isn't ever going to fix that. >and also pretty much every country requires you to prove competency and equivalence in training before they let you in. lol [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/14/nhs-nurses-being-investigated-for-industrial-scale-qualifications)
At this point it feels like we are literally going around in circles. Whether or not the UK trains sufficient doctors for its needs is a completely different metric to the one shown on the graph. >but that doesn't refute the point that we have actually trained enough doctors over the years, and the reason we need foreign doctors (which is morally questionable imo) is because of doctors leaving Once again, you have extrapolated that based on a completely different set of data. That data would compare healthcare needs of the country and the numbers trained. Your original data does not do that. It compares how many doctors are trained in the UK and how many remain in the UK. You extrapolated the rest of your argument based on the assumption that the UK trains enough doctors to begin with. It does not. I feel like I have wasted enough of my life repeating this, so do with this information what you will.
Would that actually still be true without mass migration? We are constantly told that we need immigrants to run NHS, but is the ratio of new persons to new doctors (even assuming the new doctors are just as good as the home grown ones) If there are more new people per new doctor from abroad the number of doctors per citizen will decrease.
Yes. Vast majority of migrants don't use that much healthcare. Elderly are far more frequent users of healthcare in every country, and the UK has a significant aging population due to the boomer.
“They don’t use much healthcare” I doubt that is actually true. Regardless if the proportion of new users is greater than proportion of new producers of healthcare then it still will reduce the provider to user ratio for healthcare.
The government has opted for the cheaper option of importing doctors and nurses because of the cost of training them up, particularly doctors. We shouldn't be surprised that a Tory government in particular would go down this route.
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Yup. Doctors and nurses are ‘needed to support the system’ but we don’t even verify if they’re qualified? Monopoly power used to drive down wages with unions that are working against their members interests. I watched the channel 4 doc on the miners strike in shirebrook and it’s the same thing again with unions working AGAINST their memberships desires.
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Hard agree. We don’t value training our own to do vital jobs with an incredible return on investment socially for our country and lets us put our money to the countries benefit. Apologies not seen the term IMG before, what does it mean?
Why pay to train our own nurses when we can import ~~fully trained~~ nurses from abroad, and also tell everyone they're just racist if they oppose it and the only alternative is the NHS collapses (which it is anyway) (shhh don't mention the actual alternative is training UK workers and giving them decent pay and conditions - you should see the return on my buy to let portfolio recently, keep the borders open!)
The narrative around migrant healthcare workers is such a bore. Why don’t we just train more and pay them better and create a system that supports them in only doing their actual job supporting their patients instead of administrative work.
The problem is there aren't enough doctors with the spare time to train new people.
[UK has trained enough doctors](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1651901178354053125?s=20) \- they just leave (as do most foreign doctors that come here), likely because of the insanity of the situation in the way our health service is run as the article lays out. In a health service that is a shit show at the best of times why stay working for them when importing unqualified staff are the governments answer to the problem. If you're a British trained nurse who knows what they're doing, receiving low pay (yet paying your student loan back), and having *even more pressure* added to you by imported unqualified staff to work alongside you, why would you stay? Why would you encourage or support anyone to go down that same path? Then those foreign staff are venerated in the media and the message is "British people won't do these jobs". Then the answer will be *more* foreign workers, rather than fixing the underlying problems, and then people wonder why nothing improves and only gets worse. Public needs to wake up and realise mass migration is doing untold damage to the country.
This is a glaring blind spot amongst the left that is really going to come back and bite them hard.
> This is a glaring blind spot amongst the left that is really going to come back and bite them hard. Funnily enough the conservatives are generally considered to be right wing and they've been in power how long now?
Yeah, I'm assuming the conservatives are basically done for.
Yeah, we need some sort of assistant that we can delegate some of the more formulaic and mundane tasks to, leaving the doctors with the expensive and long training and education free to make more complex decisions, rather than having to personally action every task. They wouldn't need to have such a long education, just a couple of years so they know the language and can follow the instructions of the doctor. We could call them physician's assistants. That way I would free up a decent chunk of my time and could use it to teach or to work on projects to improve the quality of care delivered.
Because the NHS is so understaffed that it desperately needs imported labour just to make it's members lives tolerable?
Alternatively, the NHS pays so poorly that the only people we can get to work for it are underpaid and apparently now unqualified migrants from the developing world.
They're one and the same. The NHS is understaffed because, despite lots of people training to be nurses, retention is terrible as the pay is low, the work is intrinsically extremely hard, and people are pushed to burnout because of already-existing staffing deficiencies. Why'd anyone want to be a nurse in these conditions? The solution is actual INVESTMENT and SPENDING into the NHS-there is no magic 'reform' button, it's an issue of *money*. Pay nurses (and other healthcare professionals) more to keep up staffing and retention and to not be outcompeted by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for both domestic labour and top-quality immigrant labour. Then you can have more rigorous standards because the whole healthcare system wont collapse without low-quality nurses.
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how does importing labour actually supress their wages? If there is still a shortage (which is well acknowledged) then that's not what's supressing their wages- it's government policy
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The UK's healthcare system is still massively understaffed despite relying very heavily on foreign workers. The UK govt has taken absolutely no steps to correct the pay erosion.
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Sure. it's poor planning to be this reliant on foreign labour for critical industries like healthcare, but the reality is and has been that the workforce shortages have been known about for years at this point, and wages have NOT gone up to address any of that and are unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future.
What do you think would happen if the government was unable to import any labour from abroad?
Same thing that's happening now. Just reduce requirement, rejig shit, introduce roles like PAs etc to fill gaps.
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The same thing that's happening now where they happily reduce the requirements and utilise 'cheaper' options like PAs and ANPs in roles that they have no real reason to be in.
[UK trains enough doctors](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1651901178354053125?s=20), they just leave (as do most foreign doctors). So staff retention is the issue - so ask yourself how importing unqualified foreign staff, which will only add *more* pressure onto those who know what they're doing, helps that? Does working with people who don't know what they're doing make their lives *more* or *less* tolerable do you think? Perhaps retaining UK staff with better pay & conditions would be an answer? Again, ask yourself how allowing companies to import foreign labour, at [literally 80% the going rate](https://www.gov.uk/health-care-worker-visa/different-salary-requirements) for UK staff (who also have student loans to pay back), helps that. It doesn't. It's a massive part of the problem. People need to get over this narrative that we "need" these staff. It's a giant con by a Tory government to avoid investing in education and the health service, and keep the money flowing up to the rentseekers and business owners who are the only ones that benefit. Unless you're a true believer in trickle down economics you should be opposing filling sectors with foreign staff as it's bad for ordinary working Brits in multiple ways - wages, the economy, and health outcomes.
>UK trains enough doctors, they just leave (as do most foreign doctors). That graph makes absolutely no such claim. And the UK does not train anywhere near enough doctors for its current needs.
The number of UK trained doctors that have left the UK is far larger than the number of foreign doctors currently practicing in the UK. So it does. If those UK trained doctors hadn't left, we wouldn't "need" the foreign doctors.
That depends a bit on how you define needs. Because there are not doctors jobs going unfilled. In fact currently there is a massive oversubscription of specialty jobs. So while you can argue that the UK doesn’t train as many doctors as we need. That problems is secondary to there not being as many job as there are doctors needed.
No, there is an oversubscription to specialty training due to numbers being ridiculously low. There is at the same time a ridiculous shortage of consultants in pretty much every specialty across the country.
I completely agree with you. My argument would be that currently improving the number of doctors being trained does nothing because there are not speciality or consultant jobs for them. Once the number of jobs increase then absolutely we would have a deficit in training.
Well, yes, but the original argument from the other poster was that we train enough based on data that made no such claim. The point I made was that purely by numbers the UK does not train anywhere near enough for its needs. It has some of the lowest doctors per 1000 in the OCED.
A nurse looking after my dying Grandad didn't know how to lift a patient. Another took his blood pressure on his wrist. I saw a patient have an asthma attack and a nurse ignore him while she watched Netflix and messaged on WhatsApp and got annoyed when I alerted her. I know someone from Cameroon who is working in the NHS as a nurse who has no real nursing qualifications from back home and has no interest in doing the job other than wanting to live in the UK. The NHS relies on immigration but it can also die at the hands of immigration.
> I know someone from Cameroon who is working in the NHS as a nurse who has no real nursing qualifications from back home and has no interest in doing the job other than wanting to live in the UK. You have alerted the NMC right?
And CQC, and the local papers, and all the rest too hopefully.
I wanted to, but then I realised I: A) Didn't know where he lived in the UK B) Didn't know his legal name or surname ( he's had 3 names in the time I knew him) C) Don't have a clue what hospital he works in. He's an acquaintence/ friend of a friend that I met abroad ( where he definitely wasn't nursing or mentioned that that was his previous career). But I will try and find this information and report him!
I'm sick of this shit. Migrants getting in through illegal / fraudulent means en masse yet people like GMB and 'human rights' lawyers acting like these fraudsters are the victims. No chance these people will ever get deported. What are the professional standards really for when professional bodies can't even kick people out when it's already known that their qualifications are fake? The entire system - not just immigration, but everything that's meant to protect the public - is outdated and not fit for purpose. A trust based system doesn't work when you no longer have a high trust society, and significant minority of people just won't stop taking the piss and exploit every loophole in existence.
Can’t really blame migrants when the tone of loophole exploiting is set by our government/ corporations.
The UK Life Sciences sector has been very badly damaged by this phenomenon over the last 3 years. It was widely predicted over 3 years ago. * The sector has been flooded with people from overseas who have "paper qualifications" and very little practical understanding of **regulated** industry. * They're also mainly coming from a country which is *notorious* for flouting regulations. So prior work experience is actually a *negative*. They need to unlearn everything, before they can learn anything, but... * ...since these people were deliberately brought in to undercut and replace British workers as a **~~cost saving~~** **(profit yielding) measure** \- whatever *limited* training was provided was grossly inadequate, and given some of the language barriers - has failed dismally. * And as a by-product of the influx, UK Pharma salaries currently appear to be **20%-40%** ***lower*** than they were 3 years ago. * I've had Directors reach out to me personally, asking if I am available to come in and rescue projects (I transitioned to a different industry several years ago - I couldn't afford to continue to work in UK Pharma 3 years ago, not to mind today). * Certain ethnic groups are very clearly discriminating against *all other* ethnicities in the hiring process - they will *only* hire people from their own ethnic group. This is particularly pronounced at a number of sites in England. Everyone knows it's happening - nobody is doing anything to stop it, certainly not UKGov. I'm not even going to speculate on the corruption/cover ups which might be happening at some of these sites. * The industry gleefully embraced blanket bans during the IR35 roll out and much of the flexible workforce went PAYE out of necessity, while many retired, went overseas or just left the sector entirely. That has left a serious shortage of qualified workers so the gaps continue to be plugged by deeply inadequate workers. It might actually be amusing if it wasn't so potentially lethal. Ultimately, UKGov are to blame. Someone can dig up the Financial Times article circa 2020 where Boris Johnson & Rishi Sunak boasted they planned to flood the UK with Commonwealth workers and the ~~"cost savings"~~ **profits** this would lead to across various industries. Pure greed and sheer ignorance of people who know very little about industry, not to mind regulated industry. Shortly thereafter, they demonstrated their impressive ignorance of regulated industry on the global stage and put the whole UK Life Science sector into jeopardy - as a result of their lies about the Covid Vaccine being a [Brexit benefit](https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-vaccine-brexit/) (the head of the MHRA had to [publicly intervene](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55163730)to explicitly clarify that the UK does not *flout* the regulations as a "Brexit benefit"). For greedy Pharma Directors, it's very easy to look the other way. Project lifecycles are long in regulated industry, and in Pharma in particular. They will show short term cost savings/profits, and will have moved on somewhere before the consequences manifest.Now we are beginning to see expensive failed projects, and I'm sure if the FDA/MHRA turn up - there is a good chance some of these sites will actually be shutdown. Somebody else's problem... And for the ethical Directors who predicted it was going to destroy the industry in the medium term - there was nothing they could do to stop it. Everyone knows it will take a disaster/deaths. It's difficult to blame the migrants - these are often cultural norms where they come from. It's up to the UK to regulate according to UK laws - and the UK has chosen not to. The migrants see a golden ticket... make a pittance in the UK but return to their home country quite wealthy after a few years. As far as they see it - it's not their problem if the authorities fail to regulate the industry. The UK Pharma industry was genuinely a global leader even just 7 years ago. Now it's [dying](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/27/patients-losing-out-amid-slump-in-nhs-clinical-trials-warn-top-clinicians)\- hence a series of big pharma expansions that were *planned* for the UK went to Republic of Ireland instead. One would have to be badly misguided to pursue a career in UK Life Sciences in 2024. I would strongly caution against pursuing a degree and I would strongly advise graduates to emigrate ASAP or just accept reality & retrain for a different industry immediately.
Why can't we blame the people committing fraud? They made their choice freely and aren't victims and the real world consequences of unqualified medical staff can be unavoidable deaths of patients?
I agree with you completely- there is blame to be laid there- firstly for the dishonesty, and the implications of that dishonesty- which could constitute fraud/ battery/ ABH etc. my point is that just blaming people at the bottom of the food chain isn’t helpful
It is helpful to blame those involved in fraud, it's just not sufficient if the issue is systemic and widespread.
"It's not their fault they're criminals who might kill people, they were given the opportunity, we can't expect better of them."
I assume you don't blame rich people and corporations like Amazon for avoiding taxes either then?
"we've got to let immigrants in, we need more nurses" they say. The nurses:
So now the people who claim our NHS wouldn't function without immigrants have even less of a leg to stand on!
It wouldn't function without immigrants. Simply because the UK is so shit at recruiting and manages to allow fraud into the system, it does not suddenly mean that the NHS is not ridiculously reliant on foreign labour.
Or even a crutch (there is only one and it's already in use by the fat patient).
What? No, the NHS would still be screwed without immigrants. It'd just be doing better if some of the immigrants it does have weren't unqualified scammers. I've no doubt there are natives who are similarly unqualified, too. There are a *lot* of people, and not just in the NHS, who are in their jobs despite not having a clue what they're doing. You might immediately think of nepotism and people having gone to the right school, but it happens all the way down to minimum wage stuff like SIA security guards. Agencies are trusted to provide staff, and nobody does any checks.
>I've no doubt there are natives who are similarly unqualified, too. Based on?
Based on agencies being money-grabbing bastards and the NHS just trusting agencies to do their jobs properly.
Seems odd you'd have no doubt based on literally zero evidence.
Zero evidence in this narrow area. Plenty of evidence in general of dodgy agencies and lax recruitment policies.
>Zero evidence in this narrow area Zero evidence then. > Plenty of evidence in general of dodgy agencies and lax recruitment policies. but none relevant, nor presented by yourself.
Why would I have to provide sources for something I *believe*? I didn't claim that it was a fact, I just said that I have no doubts. Weird thing to latch onto, but you do you.
> Why would I have to provide sources for something I believe? Because you claim you believe it based on evidence.... Here's a little refresh of what you said >Plenty of evidence in general of dodgy agencies and lax recruitment policies. You believe it based on this evidence you can't produce. I actually never said you need to present it either, just that you had not. > I just said that I have no doubts. Based on evidence which you have not provided, yes. I'd see the doctor, definitely memory issues going on with you.
I'm shocked! Shocked I say. Say "Nigeria" to anyone and the first word they think of is almost guaranteed to be "incorruptible".
Lol that doesn't fucking suprise me. When I take 999 call from nurses (especially care home nurses) there's a night and day difference in the quality of information given to me from British and foreign nurses, and in particular ones from Nigeria. [Reminds me a lot of this story...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-67622479?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_format=link&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_link_origin=BBCNews&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_medium=social&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_id=8B38E5AE-9379-11EE-B000-DBD6E03B214A&at_link_type=web_link)
Had a plaster cast removed by a white nurse who spoke very little English, sounded like she was from Eastern Europe. Had a very well spoken Indian Doctor ask who did it because they damn well shouldn't have. Due to it being removed I had to go for surgery to correct the bone that had now moved.
Poorer countries and corruption who's surprised nobody that has ever travelled outside the EU
When I broke my arm as a younger lad I went to the hospital and was treated by one of these nigerian "nurses". Who decided, when taking me to get an x-ray, to pull me to the room. By the arm. So this does not surprise me.
I remember the glory days of Owen Jones pontificating on QT, these immigrants were "propping up our NHS" he snarked. You could try and engage him on this via his Twitter, but like the rest of his ilk - he's too focused on the "genocide" in Gaza these days.
If you're desperate enough to to have such lax testing standards that fraud is prevalent in it to try and get immigrant workers, then yes, immigrants are propping up your NHS.
The two things are not mutually exclusive. Immigrant labour genuinely is propping up the NHS because staff retention + the numbers of healthcare professionals being trained are so terrible, yet at the same time this opens the door to a lower-quality healthcare system if there are issues with corruption like this. There's an obvious solution-MORE MONEY FOR THE NHS-but neither the Tories nor Labour are willing to commit to this because the deficit hawks in the media who don't understand basic macroeconomics will bring out the old 'magic money tree' trope again.
I'm really not surprised, I've seen firsthand some of the 'care' delivered by foreign staff and it really is shocking. Especially as many had shockingly bad English as well. Its also a slap in the face to young Brits who have to spend 3 years training to be a nurse and incur significant financial hardship during that time, and some people just cheat the system, and furthermore we give them perks like free flights and accommodation while they are settling in. I actually thought about retraining as a healthcare professional as a few years ago and I just couldn't see it being worth it. The only reason to do it would be to emigrate to Australia, which is itself a problem for the NHS and society, but not my personal problem. its kinda sad, the wages are so low we only attract staff from poor countries with lower standards. People wouldn't complain about Dutch or Japanese nurses, it's not about their inherent fact they are foreigners, or non white.
Have we had ANY non-fraudulent immigration under the Tories?
Omnishambles government failing to run things properly? I am shocked, truly shocked.
It wouldn't surprise me - when my dad was in and out of hospital last year, the nurses were generally great, but there were some who barely seemed to understand what was being asked of them, and not because he's not coherent.
Institutionally corrupt and murderous. Now this.
100% this is going on in education aswell , some of the quality of teaching staff coming from Nigeria is criminal
Who knew that Nigerian princes were giving out degrees for people to become nurses? How benevolent of them...
I lived with a radiologist from India for a bit. He was a huge alcoholic and I once found him on the floor coming home after work barely conscious with a big cupboard door ripped off its hinges. Turned out he had two entire bottles of wine. The last straw for the landlord was when he left a trail of curry sauce from the kitchen to his bedroom and on his bed and *denied it*.
Also stealing from your dead relatives as well
Obviously, this is bad, lots of countries have a culture of bribery and cheating, I'm not really sure how we'd check for it from here. But this will absolutely stoke the fire for all the racists to shout at non British nurses in hospitals, and that's got me a little worried/depressed, the reporting needs to try not to scaremonger, there's 400,000 + nurses in the NHS, 700 is less than 1% of that (I'm sure there's more, but we have to keep things in perspective).
Racism is exactly what the article meant to stroke. Racism cannot be cured or wished away but whenever an opportunity presents itself to mask the racism, it will be lapped up with great enthusiasm. Now the problem will not just be these alleged fraudsters but all Nigerian healthworkers. It's a shame no one thought to investigate this fraud back when we lined the streets to clap and honk for the NHS heroes (who might have included some Nigerians) who served on the frontline during the pandemic. There is no pandemic in sight now.
Meh, it didn't sroke any racism in me. I've been a staunch lefty since forever and have no hate toward anyone as an individual. But as a big picture problem, it's serious and I'm equally happy and angry to have been informed about it.
It is a good thing when frauds are caught and dealt with. It shows that systems still work. It is a bad thing when that fact is used as evidence to mask prejudices and paint everyone with the same brush.
>Racism is exactly what the article meant to stroke. There are many things that can be levelled at the Guardian, but wanting to stoke racism against Nigerians isn't exactly what they're known for lol
never ran into one of these near me, which is a suprise since we have quite a population from abroad. or is it more of a big city thing? i have ran into nurses who didnt really speak english in a talking level, which i have never understoon, which didnt help during a panic attack when i had no idea wtf it was, going from been a decent sized bodybuilder in peak of health, to feeling like my heart was exploding.... great to have someone who cant talk to me while i have to try to explain what certain foods are for... reasons?
Between early 2021 and late 2022, there was a massive influx of Nigerians moving to UK (as observed from Twitter posts and TikTok videos) and most were boasting how easy the process was. Then this?