Perils of Becoming Dependent on Eastern European Health Practitioners to Meet NHS Workforce Needs
Thursday 03 April 2008Comment on this article Permlink
At a recent conference, City University professor of health services research and policy, Roland Petchey stressed the importance of building a home-grown NHS workforce.
In 2004-05, less than 10 per cent of nurses coming to the UK from Europe were from Eastern European accession states.
By 2006-07 this had risen to 60 per cent, with Poland providing as many nurses as the whole of Western Europe.
The proportion of doctors practising in the UK from Eastern Europe has gone up from 1 per cent in 2004 to 3.5 per cent in 2007.
However, many Eastern European states face a shortage of health professionals. For example, Poland only has 2.3 GPs and 4.9 nurses per 1,000 people, compared with an EU average of 3.6 GPs and 8.2 nurses.
An example was cited by Professor Petchey in 1986 when the accession of Spain and Portugal to the EU led to a short-term “spike” in NHS recruitment.
This had a short term impact but petered out after two years.
It was estimated that the same effect would happen regarding the influx of East European workers, albeit after a four-year period.
The demand for home-grown staff will be further increased by the need to replace ageing workers: in 2006, 28 per cent of GPs were 50-59 years old and nearly one in 10 was over 60.
The number of nurses aged over 40 jumped from 46 per cent in 1995 to 64 per cent in 2007.
Professor Petchey said the problem will be further compounded by a falling supply from non-European countries.
In addition, he told delegates that the UK was becoming less attractive to doctors and nurses from newer EU countries such as Poland, where pay and conditions are improving.
An ethical code of conduct was signed by the Department of Health in 2004 to stop the recruitment of doctors from developing nations such as the Philippines, and the effects of this are starting to be felt.
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