80,000 Uk Students Told They Can’T Be Nurses.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/547556/80-000-students-told-they-can-t-be-nurses

Many have said on here "where would the NHS be without immigrants" and "immigrates are not taking our jobs, they are simply doing the jobs that we Brits won't do."

Well is this the real truth of the matter?

[Mamyalynne]

It is lamentable that our young people cannot enter and train for a profession so worthwhile - sadly yet again it is all about the lack of funds each trust has to train them up.

[dannyk13]

The cost cutters strike again.This is disgraceful.

[seadogg]

Its not easy to get into a course leading to and NHS job. A family member is at present doing a physiotherapy degree and is having to work hard. These courses are very popular as they finance students, so they attract many applicants.

[Gromit]

// Well is this the real truth of the matter? //


What is that then? The truth is that to train a nurse costs £70,000 and there is not enough money to train all that apply. For £70,000 an hospital can have 3 qualified nurses. So they have a choice, have 2 third less nurses or employ ones that have qualified abroad.

And it means we are plundering foreign countries of their qualified people.

[shoota]

A very high number of these applicants would be rejected as unsuitable even if the finance were available - just because someone applies doesn't mean to say they would be accepted yet their refusal still goes into this statistic.
This article would only be valid if it read '80,000 SUITABLE UK students told they can't be Nurses'......

[woofgang]

shoota, I was going to say the same

[dannyk13]

It is beyond belief that 80,000 applicants were unsuitable.

[dannyk13]

Also what about the nurses, now in their forties, who left to start a family,who cannot find a position in nursing because of a preference for younger (and cheaper) foreign nurses?

[dave50]

It all started to go downhill when it was decided that nurses must have a degree.

[Old_Geezer]

That is quite the eye-opener. They'd rather leech nursing talent from foreign countries, where the supplying country probably needs to retain that talent, than to do the morally right thing and invest in training.

That said, expecting someone else to have trained potential staff and being able to pick from the resulting resource desperate for a job, seem to be the modern company ethos these days. Possibly because staff are not valued and the company has a duty to look after them, but rather they are a commodity resource that one gets and dispenses with, as if they were desks or chairs or PCs. They're there just to be used as required.

What is the problem here ? Are they worried they will spend a fortune on training for those trained to go get better paid jobs elsewhere ? In which case raise the eventual post-trained salaries to the market level, and add a pay-back clause if someone wishes to leave before x years after being trained.

No one seems to care, or want to do the right thing. There should be laws to ensure immigrant labour is only allowed if posts are unfillable from those citizens already here, and are not offering UK pittance level wages to ensure no national interest, but that reward/environment meets UK expected standard.

If Brits won't do a job then it seems likely the reward for doing it is not attractive to UK citizens. It's the market in action. If there is low demand then the employer needs to allocate more financial resource, or other attraction, to the position, to increase the demand for the post. But apparently the labour market isn't allowed to be affected by supply & demand, potential employers are allowed to short circuit the system by looking outside the UK market for those more desperate or with lower costs/expectations.

[mikey4444]

danny......I'm not sure there is any evidence that 80,000 were not suitable. Some may have been of course but the primary reason that they were turned down is for the reasons given in the Express article, and by others on here. There isn't the money to train our own people. It always comes down to money in the end and the current cuts have only added to the situation.

[dannyk13]

Mikey, that still does not explain why the older nurses wishing to return can't find jobs.

[mikey4444]

Danny...maybe these overseas Nurses undercut any of our own home-grown Nurses ? It could also be that a freshly trained Nurse may be more up to date than somebody coming back to the job after a break of say, 20 years.

I remember Dr. David Owen saying, many years ago, that if somebody needed urgent medical treatment in the Houses of Parliament, it would be better if they waited until the Ambulance arrived, as he was now so out of date !

Not sure I would would want him peering down at me, if I was ill, but that is besides the point I suppose !

[dannyk13]

I still think it is a sad state of affairs.

[Gromit]

To train 80,000 rejected nurses at £70,000 each would cost the NHS an extra £5.6billion. There just isn't the money there.