Foreign locums fill gap
Published: 25 June 2008
The health sector is seeing a rise in the number of temporary staff from overseas, despite the NHS ban on recruiting skilled professionals from some countries abroad. Colin Cottell reports
The number of medical staff being recruited from abroad to work in the UK health sector is on the increase as recruiters look overseas to fill gaps in the market, according to medical recruiters.
Kate Bleasdale, managing director of Healthcare Locums, says her company has seen a dramatic increase in the proportion of agency staff from overseas.
“This time last year the percentage of locums from abroad was about 40%; now it’s 60%,” she says. Bleasdale says the rise has been across the board, including doctors, allied health professionals and social workers. Of 4,000 locums on assignment in any week, 2,400 are foreign workers, she says.
Bleasdale says that locums come from 25 different countries, but in particular from Canada, Australia, Sri Lanka and Poland. And 99% are English speaking.
“It’s all about supply and demand,” says Bleasdale. “There are not enough of our own people to fill the jobs and so we have to go abroad to fill them. It’s now a huge part of what we do.”
She adds: “I would be surprised if I am talking to you next year and it’s not 70%.”
Bleasdale says that while recruiting from abroad is more difficult than using UK candidates, the company has a “mixture of measures” in place to ensure there is “ a pipeline of people” coming through. These include overseas recruitment agents and advertising. The company also pays to make sure it is “near the top” of search engines.
Philip Blackburn, a health economist at Laing & Buisson, a company that specialises inproviding data on the health sector, estimates that between a quarter and a half of those being recruited come from overseas, compared with between a quarter and a fifth previously.
He told Recruiter the introduction of independent treatment centres, which are largely staffed byoverseas personnel, has opened the door to new markets for recruiters in the sector.
The increase in overseas recruitment has occurred despite a ban by the NHS on the active recruitment of skilled overseas staff by agencies from most of Africa, parts of Asia and the Third World.
Spencer Evans, recruitment manager at Your World Medical Recruitment, says he has seen a steady rise in the number of temporary staff from abroad over the past few years, though not “a dramatic one”. This had been ight across the range of allied health professionals, he says.
Evans told Recruiter the rise in overseas recruits has been mainly due to increased demand. However, he believes it’s partly because
some of those graduating in the UK in areas such as radiography have been “scared into thinking” there was no work. “There definitely is work,” he adds.
Damien McFaul, managing director of healthcare recruiter Alexander Leigh Consulting, has also noted a steady increase in overseas recruits, with many Australians taking advantage of their Australian/UK dual nationality to work in the UK. Those on the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme stay between two to five years, he says, while those on working holiday visas remain for one or two years.
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