Nurses from overseas.

Here is a heart warming little story about the efficiency and excellent management of the NHS....

A year and a bit ago we needed to fill some posts so a couple of managers went on a jolly to a popular city in Spain I shall not mention, but Gaudi used to live there and it's a well known destination for excellent weekend breaks. They recruited around 25 nurses for our hospital.

When they arrived I was asked to participate in their orientation and facilitate their smooth progress into the wards. What a fucking laugh...they could hardly speak English. I had to almost start from scratch.

Me: Do you know what this drug is used for?
Nurse: No
Me: OK..it's used for asthma.
Nurse: What is asthma?
Me: It's when there is narrowing of the airways....you know...wheezy. (Realistic impression of someone dying of an asthma attack. Patients are pissing themselves at senior members of staff obviously playing a game of charades in the middle of a busy hospital ward).
Nurse: Wheeeeeeezzzzziiieee??????? Oh..ok. No breathe.
Me: Si...si. Bien. So....what is this drug for?
Nurse: (Shrugs shoulders, shakes head).
Me: Arthritis. Stiff joints? Comprendez???
Nurse: I don't know word you saying...
Me: Rheumatiod arthritis. Autoimmune disease. Patients can't move very well. You know what joints are?
Nurse: No.
Me: Fuck it..I'm going for a coffee. Can you make the beds?

Now, this would not be so tragic except that at the time 2 cohorts of nurses that had been trained by us were about to graduate, from 2 separate universities. I'm not sure how much it costs to train a nurse...probaby getting on for at least £100,000..probably more. I'll look it up. But there were no jobs for a lot of them, because they had been taken up by nurses recruited from abroad that couldn't speak English and were taking up virtually all of my time. Eventually, the trust paid for them to have private English lessons. Are you laughing or weeping?

To be fair, once they had cracked the lingo (after about 6-8 months) they were terrific nurses and I have to be honest, a lot better than some of our home grown ones, but ...hey...these were young European women who were doing their London bit and guess what?:less than 18 months later they'd all moved on anyway. Most of them realised that once you've been on the London Eye and seen all the shows, there's not much else here apart from shit weather. Being on a nurses salary there's not much you can afford in a city like London.

So now they're all back in sunny Spain and we're back to square one. They spent a lot of their time on various training courses to get them up to speed...I dread to think how much the whole excercise cost. But I could have told them all this before it had even happened. Hey ho.

And we're supposed to be saving money. I'm going to suggest we cut out the middle man and just flush it straight down the toilet and save every one a lot of time and trouble.