Nearly 900 nurses could be recruited from overseas in just four years by Swansea Bay University Health Board to plug workforce shortages and staff new operating theatres. A report said the health board was on track to employ 350 overseas nurses in 2022-23, having hit a target of 130 the previous year and partially meeting a target of 60 the year before that. Many are from Kerala, in south-west India.
And a further 350 are to be recruited from overseas in the current financial year, subject to approval by chief executive Mark Hackett. The scale of recruitment prompted questions at a board meeting about whether Swansea and Wales were doing enough to train homegrown nurses and whether health services in places like Kerala could suffer due to the nursing exodus.
Gareth Howells, director of nursing and patient experience, said the overseas recruitment provided the health board an "immediacy of really experienced staff". Referring to the situation closer to home, he said: "Do you know, people don't want to be nurses. If we look at the attrition rate within local training, and the fact that for the first time ever there are surplus places, I think generally we have got more to do to extol the virtue of the NHS."
