Long read on the HSE and private healthcare companies recruiting abroad: “Migrant nurses are being charged to come here by private recruitment agents. Many private nursing homes in Ireland know this is happening, but they don’t say anything'.
THE HSE AND a number of private health companies in Ireland have ramped up international recruitment efforts in recent years amid a global shortage of healthcare workers that has left an estimated deficit of one million personnel in Europe.
While Irish health officials are concerned about the mass exit of nurses and doctors trained in Ireland to Australia and elsewhere, other counties are worried about losing their staff to this island. The code stressed that member states should focus on “retention strategies” in order to reduce their need to rely on migrant workers, and that “destination countries” should discourage active recruitment of staff from developing countries facing critical shortages of health workers.
A report by the WHO Director General published last year on the fourth round of reporting on the implementation of the code found that following the pandemic “many countries are once again turning to international recruitment to rapidly increase domestic capacity”. “Rich countries need to be focused on training and retaining graduates, in order to reduce the need for international recruitment, although there is always going to be some level of need for it,” she adds.
“Pay is also an issue. A lot of medical graduates here start as non-consultant hospital doctors. They are moving around every six months, and they have to sort their tax out each time they keep getting emergency taxed. They have to sort out accommodation, they can’t settle anywhere,” Humphries said. He blamed the difficulties caused by Covid-19 and an international shortage of health workers, and admitted that the shortage of workers is impacting community settings in particular.
The HSE works with 17 international recruitment companies which source candidates both in the EU and globally. It spent €12 million on recruitment campaigns through these agencies in 2020 and 2021. ‘Migrant nurses are being charged to come to Ireland’ Vinu Kaippilly, from Kerala, India, is one of the co-founders of Migrant Nurses Ireland, a non-profit organisation that aims to promote the interests of nurses who come to work here from overseas.
“I had to go and collect a nurse who fainted doing the test recently. It is two hours long. You have 14 stations to perform tasks at, and ten minutes at each station with no break. It is too stressful for people who have given up a lot to be here and take it, we would like to see this changed,” he explained.
“You are transitioning into a new, digital-led era. This is one of the richest countries in Europe. When Spaniards come here they are attracted to the job opportunities, and the salaries, but some people don’t realise that this country is expensive, that it has housing and health problems that they will have to confront,” he explained.
The key difference is Spain’s health service is free for most people. The European Health Observatory on Health Systems and Policies states that the Sistema Nacional de Salud is based on the principles of “universality, free access, equity and fairness of financing”. This means that the strain the health service is under can differ greatly in different parts of the country. Thousands of primary care doctors have been striking in Madrid for over two months.
“The conditions here are truly horrible. People wait for weeks to see a doctor, so they go to the emergency departments. People wait for over a year for surgeries that cannot wait, so where they can they go private. There are people being treated in hospital corridors, and when it rains, the hospitals flood.
Garcia is right – last year Spaniards spent more money on private health insurance than ever before, to the tune of €10.5 billion, an increase of 7%. “We are struggling to retain specialist doctors, and young doctors. Ireland is becoming more popular to go to because we know the pay is good. We don’t know how many doctors go there specifically, but we do know that more doctors in training are applying for certificates to work abroad. Every year roughly 1000 more doctors ask for this. Last year 4000 doctors applied for it,” Giminez said.
‘I am happier working in Ireland’ Domingo Ly, a 62-year-old doctor who worked for 30 years in Spain, emigrated to the UK, and then to Ireland for work once his children had moved out of home.
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