Nursing shortage in UK or Not???

Question

I'm confused. I am an RN in the US who is working on getting everything in order to come to the UK to work as a nurse through a travel nurse agency. Half the time I hear "there is a great shortage come on over" and the other half I hear "loads of graduate nurses are unemployed so good luck". It's enough to make a person swim headed. The agency has been nothing but fantastic, but when I keep getting differing opinions about the job market it sounds dodgy at best. So, is there or is there not a nursing shortage in the UK? I have my Bachelors with some Graduate courses if that makes a difference. Jen

Answer 1

hi there is often times when there is a nurse shortage but i havent heard of it in a while. there is always a job for a qualified nurse thou. it is mainly midwifes that the uk is short of.

Answer 2

Yeah, when I browse job opportunities, there is always very little listed. I work in the Emergency Department and whenever we advertise for one position, we have 100+ applicants. Nursing jobs are scarce, even though many of us are leaving/emigrating/retiring.  However there is a huge gap in the NHS funded care of the elderly/nursing homes which are all staffed with overseas nurses placed from agencies, as British nurses are not applying for these vacancies due to poor working conditions, dangerous patient-nurse ratio, etc.

It's also worth remembering that in Britain, health care is free for all, it's all funded by governmental taxes, which also means the government has to cut back on employing nurses as they can't afford too many of us! Not that they pay us much in the first place.

A Bachelors degree will make you desirable, but you will be competing with other newly qualified nurses.  Your agency however will have the advantage of knowing where all the jobs are, so I think you will have a great chance.  Good luck, and I'm sure you'll love working in the UK.

Answer 3

There are more nurses thanks to this Labour government than there were under the Tories, but bizarrely some people want the Tories back.

There is always a need for nurses both in the NHS and in the private sector. Come on.

Answer 4

There's a link here to the website of the Royal College of Nursing which is the main professional organisation in the UK, I don't know how much information they give to non-members, but you can browse vacancies, of course the question is finding out how many applicants there usually are per job.

There were some newspaper reports about graduate nurse unemployment in 2006, but I don't know what the current situation is, you could search for 'nursing shortages', 'nursing unemployment', 'nursing prospects' and the like and see if anything comes up.

Answer 5

I am a South African nurse with over 12 years expirence, mainly in trauma and life support. I did apply to the UK but was told that there was not a need at the present time for someone with my skills, and therefor my application got declined. I went to Australia instead, and I now consider this to be the much better option!