Adhikari Radha, Grigulis Astrida
Nursing Studies Department, The School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Doorway 6, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, UK. E-mail:
Health Policy Plan. 2014 Mar;29(2):237-45. doi: 10.1093/heapol/czt010. Epub 2013 Mar 21.
The UK National Health Service has a long history of recruiting overseas nurses to meet nursing shortages in the UK. However, recruitment patterns regularly fluctuate in response to political and economic changes. Typically, the UK government gives little consideration of how these unstable recruitment practices affect overseas nurses. In this article, we present findings from two independent research studies from Malawi and Nepal, which aimed to examine how overseas nurses encountered and overcame the challenges linked to recent recruitment and migration restrictions. We show how current UK immigration policy has had a negative impact on overseas nurses' lives. It has led them to explore alternative entry routes into the UK, affecting both the quality of their working lives and their future decisions about whether to stay or return to their home country. We conclude that the shifting forces of nursing workforce demand and supply, leading to abrupt policy changes, have significant implications on overseas nurses' lives, and can leave nurses 'trapped' in the UK. We make recommendations for UK policy-makers to work with key stakeholders in nurse-sending countries to minimize the negative consequences of unstable nurse recruitment, and we highlight the benefits of promoting circular migration.
英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）长期以来一直招募海外护士以应对英国的护理人员短缺问题。然而，招聘模式会因政治和经济变化而经常波动。通常情况下，英国政府很少考虑这些不稳定的招聘做法会如何影响海外护士。在本文中，我们展示了来自马拉维和尼泊尔的两项独立研究的结果，这些研究旨在探讨海外护士如何面对并克服与近期招聘和移民限制相关的挑战。我们揭示了当前英国移民政策如何对海外护士的生活产生负面影响。这导致他们探索进入英国的替代途径，影响了他们的工作生活质量以及他们未来关于是否留在英国或返回祖国的决定。我们得出结论，护理劳动力供需力量的变化导致政策突然改变，这对海外护士的生活产生了重大影响，并可能使护士“被困”在英国。我们为英国政策制定者提出建议，建议他们与护士输出国的关键利益相关者合作，以尽量减少不稳定护士招聘带来的负面后果，并强调促进循环移民的好处。
