Helen Carter and John Carvel 

Hospital ready to welcome Spanish nurses

Royal Preston Hospital, with its views of the Pennines and swollen river Ribble, could not be more different from most of Spain. But it will be the new home of Spanish nurses being recruited to ease the crisis in staffing levels.
  
  


Royal Preston Hospital, with its views of the Pennines and swollen river Ribble, could not be more different from most of Spain. But it will be the new home of Spanish nurses being recruited to ease the crisis in staffing levels.

The hospital and its neighbouring trust in Chorley have 100 vacancies for nurses. Around 30 of these jobs will be filled in the new year by staff from Spain, who are all the equivalent of state registered nurses and competent in written and spoken English.

Most of the vacancies are on medical wards, which can be less attractive to nurses, but there are also jobs available in intensive care.

As many as 5,000 nurses from Spain will be brought into NHS hospitals to help plug the gaps. Alan Milburn, health secretary, yesterday signed an agreement with the Spanish government to recruit them.

The pilot project involves hospitals in the Morecambe Bay trust, Preston trust, Chorley and South Ribble trust, Blackpool Victoria trust, and Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley trust. It will bring in a total of 75 nurses.

They will be subjected to stringent English language tests and take a course in the technical language used in hospitals.

Dame Pauline Fielding, nursing director at the Royal Preston hospital and the Chorley and South Ribble trust, said the proportion of nursing vacancies across both hospitals was 4%. "This is pretty low compared with other hospitals," she said.

She said the hospitals always had vacancies on medical wards because it was such hard work. The pressures "used to be a problem in winter for medical wards, but now we are finding it is an all-year round pressure."

A recruitment party is going to Spain this month to recruit nurses for all five trusts.

Of the 30 new recruits, 22 E grade nurses will go to intensive care and eight D graders to medical wards. They will receive parity of pay with their British counterparts.

As part of their contracts, they will be offered a 12 week induction programme covering language and cultural awareness. Dame Pauline said Preston had many cultural facilities to offer.

The Spanish nurses will also be befriended by other hospital workers in a buddy scheme.

Denise Ruston, a clinical manager in the medical directorate at the Royal Preston hospital, said morale was "OK" on the wards, despite the nursing shortages. "The nurses in the medical directorate are very flexible," she said. "Some will do extra shifts because they are so dedicated. Obviously we have our ups and downs."

Each ward has 30 beds, with a ward manager, two junior sisters (or charge nurses) and eight to 10 staff nurses.

"It is easier to recruit nurses in other specialities such as oncology, intensive care and renal units," Ms Ruston said. "Overall we manage, but what cripples us is if staff are hit by the flu or other bugs. It is then that we start to struggle."

Jean Faugier, regional director of nursing for the NHS executive in the north-west, said at least 1,000 extra nurses were needed in the region.

She said the deal with Spain would be more than just a short-term solution to a staffing problem. "We hope it will lead to reciprocol learning arrangement, where eventually our nurses will go to Spain and get some experience of the Spanish services."

The Royal College of Nursing said that overseas nurses had always played an important part in the NHS.

But recruiting from overseas could never be an alternative to a strong home- grown nursing workforce.

Ivy Mitchell, 77, a patient on a medical ward, welcomed the news of nurses arriving from Spain. "It doesn't matter where a nurse comes from as long as you get the right care from them," she said. "It is important to have the same nurses, because they get to know you."

The British embassy in Madrid yesterday reported strong interest among Spanish nurses in working in the NHS.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said aGuardian article on plans to recruit up to 5,000 nurses from Spain was picked up by the Spanish media and triggered a stream of calls asking how to secure an NHS job.

Mr Milburn said the NHS plan envisaged the recruitment and training of 20,000 more nurses by 2004. His department said: "This agreement [with Spain] will help us plug the gap which exists between our ambitions for the health service and the staff we have available to deliver them."

Where they are keen to export health staff

Spain's health service provides universal cover, free at the point of delivery and funded almost entirely from taxes like the NHS. However, this was introduced only in the 1980s, and many people are covered by private schemes.

During modernisation, education of doctors and nurses was expanded and Spain has twice as many doctors per 1,000 of population as most European countries. There is a surplus of doctors and nurses, and some have gone to work abroad under schemes in Portugal, Italy and Ireland that are similar to that agreed with Britain.

Spain spends 6% of GDP on health, and has 338,000 health workers, 73,000 of them doctors. Under its devolved government, seven of the more powerful regions, including the Basque country and Catalonia, are entirely responsible for their own health care. The other 10 are organised from the centre, but it is planned to give them responsibility.

Primary care is the greatest strength. Modern, efficient health centres can be found even in remote rural areas. They are well equipped to do much of the work that in Britain is likely to be referred to hospitals. Some say, however, there is a tendency for GPs to bow to patient pressure and over-prescribe.

Spain's centre-right government has made an effort at reform. But the measures, including replacing brand-name drugs with generic alternatives and reducing the list of free medications, proved unpopular. Neverthless cost cutting, or cost controlling, remains a priority.

Adela Gooch in Madrid

 

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