NHS turning to overseas workers as it struggles to fill vacancies - and Dorset is no exception

It held a recruitment session last month in Spain, one of four searches for staff in the EU this year.

From the three events held previously, 12 Italian nurses have already started work and nine are coming soon. Seven nurses from Spain will be joining the hospital.

It has prompted concern from patient governors and unions, who say the situation at DCH echoes what is going on across the NHS.

Helen Eccles, south west regional head of health for Unison, said: "DCH is not unique; it is true to say that every acute trust in the South West is struggling to recruit and retain registered nurses."

A quick scroll through recruitment pages shows 14 other foundation trusts holding recruitment days abroad within the next month or so.

Helen said there is low morale in the NHS, exacerbated by worries that the government's plans for a 'seven-day health service' will come at the price of unsociable hours pay.

"Nurses haven't had a real-time pay rise in a number of years. That is affecting morale. The government needs to properly invest in its health service and start giving health care staff the remuneration they deserve.

"People working in the health service believe in a health service that delivers the needs of the patient they serve. But David Cameron's plan seems to be that with the same level of staff, they will deliver a seven-day service with the same envelope of money.

"A number of nurses have said 'if you remove unsociable hours pay we won't be able to afford to continue to work for the NHS.'

"We should not be having to go abroad to find staff. We should be looking at how we retain staff and helping them develop."

The cost of sending two interviewers to an overseas recruitment event is approximately £500- the hospital uses economy flights and budget hotels.

Patient governor Derek Julian said staff at the hospital do an excellent job, but employment and retention needs to be looked at on a national level and said the worry with employing foreign nurses is that they will "Why is it that in this country in this day and age we are not getting enough nurses through?

"Do you really need academic qualifications to be a nurse?

"It used to be that nurses got the best training and they were on the wards- surely we could revert back to a similar scheme?

"More young people need to be encouraged in to nursing, especially boys who are not really told it is a profession for them."

Dorset County Hospital’s director of nursing Alison Tong said: “We are committed to ensuring our patients receive safe and effective care from our nursing workforce.

“It has been widely reported locally and nationally that there is a shortage of registered nurses. In the future this position will be addressed by the increased number of students in training; currently there is a shortage.

“We are actively recruiting across the UK but this alone will not meet our needs. It is for this reason that we have chosen to recruit in the EU.

“We have been delighted by the high calibre and caring staff that we have recruited and they have been warmly received by our existing workforce.

“The number of nurses that we have recruited from the EU equates to around five per cent of our workforce.

“We have chosen to recruit overseas nurses using our own staff to interview in the country as I believe this enables us to recruit the highest calibre staff at the lowest cost.”

 IN the 'Blueprint: End of Year Review', hospital bosses write: 'Staffing remains the biggest risk to the organisation. We are not succeeding in achieving the levels of recruitment and retention we want. We have been experiencing high numbers of qualified nursing vacancies [...] and have been competing with local NHS organisations to attract applicants from the same limited pool of people.'

DORSET County Hospital's finance chief has admitted the hospital has fallen behind its budget targets and is spending more than planned on agency staff.
The hospital has been planning for a £3.5million deficit in 2015/16 and at the end of May 2015 aimed to be at a deficit of around £1.2million.
 

However, in presentation to the trust board, director for finance and resources Libby Walters said that the position at the end of May was more like a deficit of £1.4million.
She said one of the major factors was the hospital's Cost Improvement Programme not delivering the expected benefits, with the shortfall between planned and delivered standing at around £520,000.
Of the £5million savings target for this year, there remains £1.3million still to be identified.
 

Another area of concern was the cost of agency staff, with the spend at 666,000 at the end of May compared to a target of 201,000.
Mrs Walters said: "We are using a lot of temporary staffing, both medical and nursing.
"We have increased the controls on it but we have till got a lot of work to be done."
She said that one key area was recruitment, as filling vacancies would reduced the reliance on temporary staff.
 

Director of nursing Alison Tong said that the issue was made more difficult by the fact that the hospital's attainment rate for students was currently at just 34 per cent, a level she described as 'atrocious'.
She added that recruiting nurses from overseas was an option but that did have its drawbacks.
Mrs Tong added: "We need to do something different as a small organisation and I think we can."
 

In terms of the savings programme, non-executive director Graeme Stanley said it was not surprising that as time goes on the savings become harder and harder to find.
He said: "I'm not at all surprised we are finding it difficult to achieve these stretching targets that we have got and we are going to find it harder."
 

Another area of concern raised at the board meeting was issues in the ophthalmology department, with 27 complaints about the service received since April.
Chief operating officer Julie Pearce said that most concerns were not around the quality of care delivered but the whole process behind getting appointments and follow-up appointments, which she was looking into.

AS reported in the Echo, the Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has announced it wants to do more before finalising proposals for a shake-up of Dorset's healthcare.
Plans on the table include having one major hospital for the county and not a 24-hour consultancy service at Dorset County Hospital's Kingfisher Ward.

At the start of the review the CCG had anticipated it would be ready to go to public consultation this summer.
However, doctors believe there is still more to do, and public consultation is now more likely to begin in early 2016.

Dr Forbes Watson, a local GP and Chair of the CCG, said: "We have a clear vision of what we think we need to do to improve healthcare in Dorset, but want to do more detailed thinking, planning, and analysis to help set out clearly to the public how we think we would realise those ambitions.
"New information is coming through that we want to look at closely before finalising our proposals, for example, how Dorset might best respond to national NHS policy.
"We will continue our regular discussion with our health and care partners and to share our thinking with patients and members of the public so that when we do go out to formally consult people will have as much information as possible.
"This is a once in a generation opportunity to re-shape the NHS in Dorset and to improve services for local people – we have to get it right."

Debbie Fleming, chief executive of Poole Hospital, Patricia Miller, chief executive of Dorset County Hospital, Ron Shields, chief executive of Dorset Healthcare and Tony Spotswood, chief executive of Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals, said: "As Chief Executives of the hospitals and community services in Dorset we are all committed to ensuring local people get the highest quality of care and improved access to services.
"We continue to work closely with Dorset CCG on how we can organise services to best address a growing population, changing health needs, workforce, new technologies and the money available.
"The views of the public will be vital and we welcome the public consultation in 2016."