Bid To Entice Scottish Nurses South Of The Border

Recruiting officers from an NHS board in England will travel north of the border this month in an attempt to poach Scottish nurses.

The move comes just weeks after it was revealed a shortage of nursing staff had pushed care for sick and premature babies in Scotland to “breaking point”.

Ashford and St Peter’s Hospital NHS Trust, in Surrey, will bring a recruitment roadshow to the country’s four largest cities, Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, to carry out what it calls a “raid on Scots nurses”.

The visit has provoked concern with Scotland’s nursing levels already at a low.

A spokeswoman for the Royal College of Nursing Scotland said: “It is very disappointing and very concerning when nursing staff are recruited elsewhere.

“In Scotland at the moment we have around 1,700 vacancies for nurses so we are having great difficulty in filling the positions, and importantly retaining staff. Nurses are key to delivering healthcare so this type of thing is never good news.”

Last month, elderly patients at Woodend Hospital, in Aberdeen, were forced out of a ward because of a lack of nursing staff to cope with a winter vomiting bug.

Last summer NHS Grampian was forced to re-locate cancer treatment at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary because of nurse shortages. Similar problems have been mirrored across the country.

An NHS Grampian spokesman said: “Pay and terms and conditions are the same for nurses across the UK, so the recruitment drive appears to be appealing to an individual’s preference to work elsewhere.

“It’s not the first time an English trust has done this but it has been several years.

“NHS Grampian will continue to work with colleges and universities to promote nursing and working with NHS Grampian.”

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said the English trust’s focus on Scottish staff showed the level of quality on offer.

A spokesman for the Surrey trust said: “In recent years the health budget in England and Wales has been very tight so recruitment has not been as high as it could have been.

“Now that financial pressures have eased slightly, NHS bosses are increasingly looking to take on more staff and I think there will be more English-based trusts looking north of the border for staff in the future.”