The NHS is thinking of recruiting nurses from Portugal. This is not the first time that Britain has stolen talent from other countries.
I say stolen with good reason. Many people in Poland struggle to find a builder, because so many Polish builders have gone to live in western Europe. Teachers and nurses who come to Britain from abroad leave vacancies for teachers and nurses in their home countries which are not always easily filled.
Being a nurse is not a hugely difficult job. On the one hand you might need to administer an injection, but that is only one part of the job. Nursing work in a hospital often amounts to such things as changing bed linen, helping patients to wash, handing out meal and then clearing away afterwards, and so on. Is that so difficult?
Florence Nightingale did not have anything like the qualifications expected of nurses today, but she saved the lives of huge numbers of people.
Meanwhile, many young people in Britain go to college to study for degrees which will be of very little use to them, while many older people languish on the dole queues. Maybe NHS hospitals should recruit our own unemployed as assistant nurses, and let them carry out basic tasks like making beds. Then over time they could be trained in how to carry out clinical procedures like injecting.
Surely it makes more sense than recruiting nurses from abroad ... or have I missed something?
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