Do you feel comfortable poaching health staff from the Philippines

How far is it ok to move to have a better life? the next town? A country that borders where you live? Or further afield. There is constant movement around the planet for many reasons.

Presumably they come of their own free will and the 'poaching' element is the temptation of higher income and seeing a different country and lifestyle? Well, I wouldn't begrudge any human being that experience.

If people hadn’t come from abroad to the UK to live we’d be living in a mono-cultural white society. Though some people might like, of course.

My BIL is married to a Filipino woman. She and her sister came to the UK in the 80’s as nurses. Both married Brits and have families here. Their parents moved to the US later on, as their dad had worked for the American military and they were offered a visa.

Some developing world countries rely on the remittances from workers abroad, where they can earn far more money than at home. Who can blame them for taking advantage of what’s on offer?

Yes they do have a choice as to whether to work abroad or not Jennifer Eccles, the bit of your post I disagreed with was the bit about advancing their qualifications when they come to the UK, because that implied they weren’t as good as British nurses to start with, which they are, and when they arrive they have exactly the same opportunities as British nurses.
Nannan2 these nurses are not students, they are qualified nurses, many of whom are not newly qualified but have been working for years. Why shouldn’t they have rented houses though, they are key workers so deserve them as much as anybody else?

It doesn’t sit comfortably with me. And I feel equally annoyed that New Zealand poached my daughter and son in law (medics) to work over there. New Zealand should be able to afford to train their own medics, but they train insufficient numbers, and poach from other countries.

maddyone Presumably after research your daughter and son-in-law thought they would have a better life in New Zealand. That is not the country poaching them it was them choosing a better life.

The registrar whom I saw all the way through my pregnancy was a New Zealander.
I remember when we had a huge influx of Australian dentists in the 1960s.
People have always gone overseas, skilled and low-skilled, in search of a better life or just for adventure.

It's normal.

maddyone

It doesn’t sit comfortably with me. And I feel equally annoyed that New Zealand poached my daughter and son in law (medics) to work over there. New Zealand should be able to afford to train their own medics, but they train insufficient numbers, and poach from other countries.

My young DGD remarked the other day that nearly everyone she knows has family in Australia and/or New Zealand, including ours.

I was in hospital for a few weeks last summer, and almost all of the nursing and care staff were from other countries - Phillipines, Kenya, and Croatia. They were all excellent and all said they could earn far more here than in their native countries.

Elizabeth thankfully they have only gone for two years for a different ‘experience.’
However my daughter has been quite home sick , especially at Christmas. She also thought that New Zealand would have opened up by now and we would be able to visit, but of course that hasn’t happened.
I still think it’s a poor show that both the UK and other countries fail to invest in sufficient training of medics and them poach them from abroad.
Incidentally, the rose coloured glasses have definitely cracked. My daughter says all the same problems in GP practice in this country are the same in New Zealand too. I’ve never agree with us poaching medics from poor countries such as the Philippines and others.

So because you were born in the Philippines, or any other poor country you have to stay there?

?

“Poaching” makes it sound as if they would be working in a Health Service in their own countries.

It doesn’t work like that.

When I was in Madagascar only the well off, in towns could afford to pay for health care so jobs in the medical sector were limited.

Doctors who had paid for their expensive training did not work in rural areas because they could not make enough money there to repay their debts.

They relied on posts in other wealthier countries to do that.

If other countries did not recruit from overseas, it would not increase the number of doctors available to those who can’t pay, in their country of origin.

It would however probably lead to a decrease in those training to be doctors, because they would not chose to run up a huge debt for training that couldn’t be repaid.

This isn't new, by any means. I worked in the NHS with some lovely girls from the Phillipines. The majority of them came here to earn money to send home to keep their families housed and fed. They weren't forced to come.

“Poaching” is a pejorative term and many people do not see it as that.
Salaries in the NHS are higher than in the Philippines and some nurses and HCAs I spoke to when Paw was in the Royal Free were sending money home and supporting their families in a way they would not necessarily have been able to do without coming over here. Casdon and others make a point.
Of course Third World and less developed countries should not be stripped of essential health professionals.
There was a time many years ago when the majority of nurses we came across at the Royal Free seemed to be Irish, then Afro-Caribbean, then from SE Asia and also Eastern Europe.
Some professions will always be in demand and people will seek out countries which value their skills.
Are you saying we should impose a quota system perhaps?

MayBeMawOf course Third World and less developed countries should not be stripped of essential health professionals.
To help ‘third world’ medical staff, I believe that the UK could use some foreign aid money, to make up the pay to the standard of that they would receive if they move abroad, encouraging them to stay. This would help their own people not only through this pandemic but for the future health of the country. But I can dream.

It wouldn’t be needed if we invested in our NHS and training as we should have done.

I understood that the Philippines trained far more nurses than they could employ themselves, quite deliberately, so that many would go and work abroad, mainly in UK and US.

The reasoning is that almost all these nurses will be sending money home to their familiesevery month and this provides the country with a substantial amount of 'hard' (£,$) currency that they need to balance their books and pay for imports.

MaizieD

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD Countries from all over the world hold recruitment drives/days in the U.K. to poach/recruit (depending on your opinion) NHS staff.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Empire, I worked in a Hospital for a while in my early twenties, forty years ago and it was happening then.

Of course I know that. What did a great many of the Windrush emigres do in the early 50s? They came to support our struggling public services. Good old Empire...

They came over here as there were no jobs in the Caribbean, we lost so many during the War, so if someone offers you a job, with pay, you accept. This has nothing to do with Brexit, nursing staff have been moving from country to country ever since the 50s, I know I worked and trained with some. Another reason is to gain new experiences.

They have been needed and welcomed since the NHS began.

Whitewavemark2

It wouldn’t be needed if we invested in our NHS and training as we should have done.

They wouldn't be needed if medical staff didn't take the opportunities to work overseas.

However, you can't stop people wanting to explore new opportunities; they have been doing this since time immemorial.

Absolutely no one can be stopped from exploring new opportunities, nor should they be, so long as they have the relevant work visa and necessary training and experience. However if anyone thinks we’re not poaching qualified medics from abroad, rather than spend the required money to train them ourselves, they are living in cloud cuckoo land. We’ve always done it, and we’ll continue to do it. I don’t approve of it. Many people in poorer countries leave their entire family, including their children, in order to work here simply to earn more money and send it home. I don’t call leaving your children in the care of others exploring new experiences, it’s actually exploiting their poverty. And British medics go abroad to work because the pay and conditions are better than what are offered here in the UK. Anyone who has read any of the GP threads through Covid will be well aware of the lack of respect that doctors experience today in Britain. It’s not so much exploring new possibilities as escaping from poor pay and conditions made worse by the way doctors and others who work in primary care, are treated by the public.

Week, I did say it upthread, but I’ll say it again.

Even if we stopped taking medical staff from poor countries it wouldn’t mean more medical treatment in those countries, because people can’t pay for it.

Where there’s no state provided health service medics only treat those who can pay.

There seems to be some idea that if they didn’t work here they would be treating more people in their own country. It just doesn’t work like that.

I've always been irritated by UK luring medics trained in other countries here. Is there a country which trains more than it needs? If we've trained the Filipino nurses mentioned here, fine.

But then I'm irritated by medics/teachers etc trained in UK never working in UK public health/education, but going straight off abroad or to work in private sector. (But these days, with students having to pay so much of their Higher Ed bill, it can be defended. Though that doesn't help the nurses, doctors and teachers who gave their time, energy and expertise for free)

Their country doesn’t train them. It doesn’t decide how many are needed. It’s not like the NHS.

It’s a purely private career decision. Funded by the student with training undertaken and paid for by them at the Institute of their choice, in their home country or abroad.

It’s got nothing to do with the State. They make no decisions about how many medics are trained.

There’s no “poaching” anymore than a business man is poached when he works throughout the World.

Bit late replying I know, but I do see the point you were making earlier Casdon when you challenged my comment about Philippino nurses being able to advance their qualifications while they were here.

I didn’t mean to imply that they were not sufficiently qualified to work here, just that maybe it would be easier for them to work their way up the career ladder here than it might be in their own country.