Posted on 07/05/2016 1:21:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Representatives of the trust which runs Pilgrim Hospital have travelled to the Philippines in a bid to fill nursing vacancies.
Matron of Nursing at Pilgrim Hospital, Michael Brunton, was in the team from United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) who travelled to the islands on a 12-day trip to recruit registered nurses.
The team returned having made 85 job offers to nurses, who it is hoped will fill vacancies at Boston,and the rest in Lincoln and Grantham
The hospital currently has 92 vacancies for registered nurses.
Interim Head of Nursing at Grantham Hospital John Boulton said the visit had been very positive and he had been very ‘humbled’ by the experience.
He said: “I was very impressed with the level of experience they had. They were very keen to get jobs over here.
“But it was a humbling experience for me because I met a lot of staff who were working in the Philippines as volunteer nurses because they could not get a job.
“I came across volunteer nurses who were working 40 to 50 hours a week for no pay, simply to gain the experience so they could get a job. Those nurses in a job are degree qualified but their salary is quite poor.”
Before the nurses are recruited, they must have the right qualifications and speak a good standard of English.
They then have to go through a lengthy process of training and tests in Lincolnshire before they can apply for a visa.
Mr Boulton said: “If you were to ask these nurses where they would rather work they would say the Philippines, but there are not enough jobs there. They are making huge sacrifices to come out to this country.”
A previous visit to the Philippines by a ULHT team in January resulted in 125 nurses being offered jobs.
The process can take nine to 12 months before the nurses take up their posts and there is quite a high drop-out rate.
Mr Boulton, who has been with ULHT for 20 years, said hospital trusts had to recruit from abroad because there are not enough nurses being trained in the UK.
He said fewer people were attracted to nursing because bursaries were no longer available for the training which takes three to four years.
We could use the nurses here, too.
The saddest thing medicine ever did was to give over training of its personnel to the Education cabal.
We don’t have enough nurses or PCPs... and they can’t turn them out of schools anywhere near fast enough.
I’m guessing they keep their nursing records in manila folders...
Ours tend to quit. My ex a nurse didn’t care for them. They believed in the doctors too much.
LOL
They are making a huge mistake. Philippine trained murses are terrible
German nurses use accordion files.
Nothing new about this.
Back when I was a medical student in the last 1980s there was a prolonged nursing strike in/around Los Angeles.
The hospital administrators got together with INS and SOMEHOW brought over new nurses from the Philippines ASAP to fill the slots. Killed the strike right away. Only nurses who weren’t standing in line at the unemployment office were the handful of “scabs” who liked their pay and benefits just fine.
Interestingly, this wasn’t long after President Reagan (you take your hat off when you say his name, son) fired the striking air traffic controllers.
Ah, for the day of free market economics.
Not that it wasn’t a living hell working with the “philippine mafia” as the nurses chattered away in Tagalog or spanish, ignored the medical students/interns (”you’re not doctors”), would take charts out our hands without word of apology [”I need that” they’d say] and ran the floors with a ruthless efficiency only Torquemada could have improved upon.
One of our local hospitals here has mostly Philippinas as nurses.
I'll never go there again, ever.
Leni
Sorry but we do have plenty of nurses now. New grads can’t even get jobs. The problem we have always had is getting RN’s to stay in hospital settings to work. It is very hard physically and the stress is high. Phillipino nurses are very good and have lots of in hospital experience unlike our new grads here tho.
Cleveland Clinic System has been laying off nurses, or buying out their contracts.
My SIL is a nursing supervisor at a large Regional Health Center in SW VA. She would strenuously disagree with you. She had a bunch of nurses who were recruited in the Philippines start at her hospital. Communication issues were horrible. I have absolutely nothing against Filipinos, I live in Tidewater VA and we have a large population of them here and they are wonderful people. But who wants a nurse dispensing their medicine who doesn' t speak English?
NIH has been recruiting foreign doctors for years...Horrid stories of patient care
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Tell me about it. My mother passed away in November.
I did some research on some of the doctors making rounds and one was educated in Jamaica and another went to med school in the Caribbeans. This was the biggest hospital group in the area.
It is a shame what our government is doing to our healthcare. It is really the slacker idiots that don’t want to work that keep electing these welfare monkeys to power.
My experience with Phillipine nurses has been very positive. Well trained, great work ethic, kind to patients. Where I live there has been a huge shortage of RN’s this past year....
Really fast on your feet.
We imported a ton of Filipinos in the late seventies and early eighties. If they could speak and understand English they were great workers and all Christians.
Of course we could actually educate our populace and have all the nurses we want.
Nursing isn’t rocket science.
Hospitals are factories under government control. Horrific bureaucratic rulings make it an insane work environment, coupled with insurance rules.
Remember when you are hospitalized you are in a factory. Choose wisely
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