?Acute shortages across the nursing sector in the UK have led to demand for professional staff from overseas, according to Hays Healthcare. The most affected areas for nursing jobs are in critical care (ITU), A&E, theatre, intensive care (ICU) and accident and emergency medicine nurses, with skill shortages also apparent for obstetrician and gynaecologist, orthopaedic, anaesthetic and recovery nurses.

?“The available talent from abroad throws an important lifeline to the UK given the pressing need for skilled nurses. Around 10% of nurses working in the UK have trained abroad and the shortage of skills can only be adequately filled by targeted international recruitment,” says Simon Hudson, director of Hays global resourcing at Hays Healthcare. ??

Hudson suggests that a combination of more effective utilisation and retention of skilled nurses, increased emphasis on training new nurses and, in the short term, increased international recruitment, would seem to provide the optimal solution to the nursing jobs crisis. ??“While most of our temporary and permanent recruitment is carried out locally, the demand for certain skills has outstripped supply. It is therefore our responsibility to help clients attract these key professionals from outside their local market,” he says.

?An international presence in 28 countries enables Hays to reach and target this extended pool of nursing professionals. “Our office network means we can source candidates from abroad and assist UK employers in finding correctly qualified nursing staff to meet their requirements,” adds Hudson. ??