‘Demand’ for overseas mental health and children’s nurses
Demand for internationally educated mental health and children’s nurses in the UK is increasing, according to a recruitment company that finds staff for the NHS.
At present and historically, the vast majority of nurses who come to the UK from overseas will register as an adult nurse.
“Paediatric nurses are currently among the highest nursing specialties in high demand”
Robert Fuller
However, recruitment and training agency Resource Finder UK said it was now facing an “increased demand from NHS trusts for international mental health and children’s nurses”.
In response to this trend, the organisation has introduced new training courses for overseas nurses seeking to register as a mental health or children’s nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
The courses are designed to help trainees prepare for the mental health or children’s nursing Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) – the practical part of the test of competence that some international nurses need to pass to join the NMC register.
Robert Fuller, managing director of Resource Finder UK said: “There is a growing demand for mental health services, particularly following the Covid-19 pandemic and wider nursing shortages.
“International nurses are key to meeting this demand, as according to NHS Vacancy Statistics nearly one in five mental health nursing posts were vacant with the percentage of those staffing gaps having increased from 13% to 18% between 2018 to 2022.
“Paediatric nurses are currently among the highest nursing specialties in high demand and there aren’t enough of them available right now according to a recent Royal College of Nursing report.”
In October 2022, the NMC reported that the “overwhelming majority” of international nurses were joining the register as adult nurses.
The regulator said this trend reflected the fact that in most international countries that provide nurses to the UK, nurse training is generalist.
“This means few professionals are joining the register as children’s or mental health nurses, and last year only one person registered as a learning disabilities nurse,” reported the NMC.
Out of the international nurses who joined the NMC register for the first time between April 2021 and March 2022, adult nurses made up 97% and mental health nurses 2%.
Children nurses accounted for just 0.75% while the proportion that were learning disability nurses was even lower as there was just one recruit.
More recent figures provided to Nursing Times by the NMC support the idea that more mental health and children’s nurses may be starting to come to the UK from overseas.
The figures relate to the type of OSCE booked as part of internationally educated nurses’ applications to join the register between February 2023 and January 2024.
Adult nursing accounted for 87.9% for OSCEs, mental health 9.1%, children’s nursing 2.9% and learning disabilities 0.1%.
