The observational nurse

I have no comment on this but thought I’d share in case some have missed Mr Buckley’s thoughts.

https://www.facebook.com/share/17eRCHvCLf/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Foreign NHS Nurses – the solution or the problem?

A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that I thought foreign nurses in the NHS who are not happy with our immigration system should go home – instead of moaning about it and threatening to remove their labour. What happened next shocked me.

Not only did the post go viral, but it also generated thousands of comments disagreeing with me: some polite, some not. I was told that the best nurses in any country are the foreign nurses. NHS nurses informed me that their foreign colleagues are amazing. Others informed me that without them, we would all die. Many foreign nurses stated that they are trained to a much higher standard than homegrown nurses.

Is any of this true? I will get to this shortly.

The NHS is broken. It has been broken for a very long time. We throw more money at it, and nothing improves. This has happened for several reasons. The main one is incompetent politicians. Followed by mass immigration that overloads the system, an incompetent management structure, and a reduction in the quality of the staff employed.

Foreign nurses are a Godsend to every government, for they are an immediate answer to a problem the public demands fixing. Foreign labour has become a drug, and our politicians are the addicts. Instead of long-term planning, they rely on foreign labour because it is cheaper and quicker. This keeps wages down in the NHS, as well as working conditions.

Without foreign nurses, wages would increase to attract more people into the role. They would be more valuable due to their shortage, and this would improve their working conditions. British nurses leaving the UK for better opportunities would decrease. The number of young people going into nursing would increase. Supply & Demand. Unfortunately, our addiction to foreign labour is the ‘spanner in the works’ that stops the above from happening.

None of this is the fault of individual foreign nurses; they are invited here to do a job. The fault lies firmly at the feet of our politicians.

The three top countries sending their citizens to be nurses in the NHS are India, the Philippines, and Nigeria. Fraud and corruption are everyday activities in most of the world. Why would nurses from these countries be any different?

I am not saying that every foreign nurse is corrupt. But if fraud is an acceptable survival strategy in certain countries, then those citizens will be more likely to hold those views.

Let us look at the Yunnik Test Centre in Nigeria. The UK’s Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) looked into this nursing qualification centre in 2023. It was widely acknowledged that organised fraud was taking place. Nearly 2000 nurses had their tests invalidated. 48 were registered and working as NHS nurses, and another 669 were in the process.

In a 2025 scandal, the NMC was found to have wrongly approved over 350 fraudulent or underqualified nurses. Cases involved testing centres in India, Nigeria, and Pakistan – over a hundred nurses were removed.

Historical NMC data shows recurring but smaller-scale issues:

2017–2021: 101 removed for deliberately misleading about qualifications; 144 removed for incorrect registrations

2018: 11 removed after using fake documents from the Pakistan Nursing Council.

In the context of the whole NHS, these numbers are tiny. They are probably a lot higher, but still a small number compared to the number of NHS nurses.

Can employing too many foreign nurses damage the overall care of a hospital? Or at least, the perceived care from a hospital?

In 2015, a study found that hospitals with a higher number of nurses trained overseas receive poorer ratings from patients. 12,000 patients from 46 NHS hospitals took part in the survey, which was undertaken by the University of Southampton and King's College London.

The study found that hospitals that had the highest number of nurses from abroad also had the highest level of patient dissatisfaction. Patients reported that they had not been treated with dignity and struggled to understand the staff.

The study stated: “Use of non-UK educated nurses in English NHS hospitals is associated with lower patient satisfaction. Importing nurses from abroad to substitute for domestically-educated nurses may negatively impact the quality of care.”

Are foreign-trained nurses more likely to be disciplined or sacked than British homegrown nurses? An interesting question where we can guess the answer.

Data from the NMC indicates that overseas-trained nurses are referred to 'fitness to practise' processes at disproportionately higher rates. Black nurses are nearly twice as likely to be referred compared to the average British nurse.

European-trained nurses are also more likely to receive sanctions preventing practice, such as striking off or suspension, compared to those trained in the UK.

These disparities are a huge problem for the NMC, which is probably an anti-racist organisation that hangs its head in shame at these stats. Hence, this data is hard to come by, hidden, and under-reported.

The point of this article is not to attack foreign nurses and demonise them; nothing could be further from the truth. My point is that our dependency on foreign medical staff is not beneficial to the NHS, the country, or the patient.

The only people the status quo benefits are the foreign nurses who gain a first-world wage. And our incompetent, lazy, pathetic politicians who cannot be trusted to run a bath.

To fix a problem, one must understand the problem. I hope you now understand this problem a little better.

The vast majority of nurses come into the profession to care and provide comfort in times of need. It is not a profession that is easy. A nurse being found guilty of murdering the very people he or she should be protecting does not do much to instil confidence in the public that they are in safe hands and neither does it make for comfortable reading. More should be done to identify anomalies in death rates or transfers to critical care if there’s a spike to protect patients.

German nurse gets life in jail after killing 10 to reduce work The palliative care nurse was convicted of the murder of 10 patients, and the attempted murder of 27 others.

Before summer is over…..

Just a friendly reminder. #travelmore #travelnow #travelworld #traveladdict

No matter what specialty you work in, there is so much to learn from patients or clients we come across. I recently had an enlightening conversation with a retired professor. I asked them if they missed work and if they enjoyed their job before retiring? Their answer was most humbling; ‘no, I don’t miss it and I never enjoyed my job. I’m a shy person, I did not enjoy speaking publicly and neither did I enjoy the attention that came with my job. I am happy I am retired and I don’t have to go through that process day in and day out….’ I guess when I asked this question I naively expected them to say ‘yes’ taking into account the time, effort and dedication it takes to become a professor. I can only applaud and admire their honesty but I could also not help feel sad for them. What kind of strength it must have taken them to do a job they did not enjoy day in and day out and at the same time did any of their peers or students notice? I further asked them why they’d made the choice to pursue their career choice and stay in their job and they said they did what was expected of them. For weeks it has made me question if I enjoy my job? The answer is mostly and nothing brings me more joy than seeing people get better or facilitating someone to have the end they’d hoped for in a dignified manner but could I feel more fulfilled? The answer is potentially yes. There is so much more to learn and explore which can all be accomplished alongside your main career choice. Don’t wait for retirement to pursue your goals and don’t live a life where you are not feeling fully fulfilled. Pursue your dreams, who knows it can make you an even better professional in your career. Finally, I also learnt the power of honesty. We do not always have to give the answer people expect us to give especially when it comes to job satisfaction. How you deliver that message is crucial and can be a game changer. Honesty can sometimes change someone’s life in profound ways. The honesty with which my patient answered what was meant to be a light hearted brief conversation left me with a lot of life lessons. They may not know what impact they have made to my outlook in life but I can only sincerely thank them for a life lesson that they delivered in a few short minutes.

There are still questions from others regarding Lucy Letby’s conviction and whether she is guilty or not. I don’t really know whether she is guilty or not guilty but what’s certain is the death rate was high in that unit. Babies did die and it’s only right that the steps taken by hospital management in handling the high death rate and how they handled concerns about Lucy Letby’s possible connection to the deaths is reviewed. The NHS has a no blame culture but this should not come at the cost of life. The fact that these charges have been brought against members of the hospital management team can only be viewed as a positive step in addressing how hospital managers in general deal with concerns especially about risks to patients, staffing and staff performance when they are raised.

Three ex-bosses of Lucy Letby arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter All three worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital when the nurse killed babies at its neonatal unit.

https://bit.ly/3FJbR3t. Interesting read….

How Do Some Bacteria Survive Ionizing Radiation? Integrity of the proteome, rather than the genome, underlies the remarkable radioresistance of Deinococcus radiodurans.

A few weeks before my dental appointment I often worry about how much tea I consume to keep me going and the effect it has on my teeth and what my dentist will likely say. Then on the days I’m working with urology patients I worry about what my tea habit is doing to my kidneys. Well in addition to other benefits, I probably should just carry on enjoying my tea drinking without being too hard on my self as it seems it does prolong life. The key is everything in moderation .

https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-024-01054-9

The risks get higher for those in extended roles. Don’t know the in’s and outs of the story apart from what’s in the article but just adding things can and do go wrong. Work within your remit and always exercise caution.

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/rotherham-hospital-nhs-trust-apologises-over-failings-in-care-by-self-confident-nurse-consultant-5194903?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLMON9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuNxaPiUirvSHSY9FjvJJ_vmlfH3W2dgiEkvSbn8pQ1TGQFgVPXLcQd3kZV5_aem_nRBWtQw5Ws_yQ-qoE1LTEQ

NHS trust apologises over failings in care by 'self confident' nurse consultant An NHS trust has apologised to dozens of patients – or their families – who died or suffered a complication due to the “isolated practice” of a “profoundly self confident” nurse consultant at Rotherham Hospital.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/my-last-day-as-a-surgeon?utm_campaign=falcon_FCzP&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=tny&utm_source=twitter&mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_brand=tny&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=app.dashsocial.com%2Fnewyorkermag%2Flibrary%2Fmedia%2F399994438&fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLMI9RleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHoGR75XY9CAwcoBOp-9TKipoktfj4-GRqBeqGs8XcdMCLpm1sQB3iWLW6Am2_aem_Edzu_54zZfeyL-3tWueCfw

My Last Day as a Surgeon A doctor with metastatic lung cancer confronts his own transition to full-time patient.

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Check the comment section; funniest comment ‘nurse he’s up and he’s not taken his meds….’

Donald Trump swears on live television

If only some of the healthcare leaders in publicly funded hospitals could be held to this level of accountability, we wouldn’t continually have an ongoing problem with underfunding and staff that are overwhelmed and overstretched.

Boeing CEO Got Grilled Over Safety Scandals... Senator Josh Hawley didn’t hold back in a heated Senate hearing, blasting Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun for putting profits over passenger safety. He pointed to Boeing’s $4.4 billion in stock buybacks since 2019—despite the 737 MAX disasters, FAA probes, and whistleblower allegations. “You strip-mine this company, you cut corners… and people die,” Hawley charged, citing a deadly pattern of negligence. Calhoun defended Boeing’s progress, but his $32.8 million paycheck—44% tied to stock performance—only fueled the fire. With Boeing’s stock down 30% and Airbus gaining ground, critics argue that corporate greed has eroded Boeing’s once-legendary engineering culture. Now, the company must prove that safety is more than just a PR talking point—it’s the foundation of its survival. 🚨✈️ Follow @tranquess_ for more such reels 🙌🏻🔥 . . . . #boeing #entrepreneur #ceo #founder #fyp #viral #startup #explorepage #business #scandal #entrepreneurship #success #billionaire #money

Having someone trust you to look after them or their
relative at their most vulnerable moment is the highest level of honour and privilege.