Hampshire Hospitals Trust: quarter of staff are from outside the UK

Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust says it relies on 'overseas' workers to continue to provide care for patients. 

The figures, from NHS Digital, shows that the trust employed 1,976 staff from outside the UK as of June 30.

Of them, 419 were from the EU or European Economic Area, and a further 1,557 were from the rest of the world.

The ratio of foreign to UK staff at the trust was higher than at NHS trusts across England as a whole, where 21.5 per cent of staff are non-UK nationals.

As of June, there were 234 doctors and 965 nurses from outside of the UK working at Hampshire Hospitals.

These figures were based on the total headcount of staff working at the trust, rather than the equivalent full-time employees.

There has been a similarly sharp jump in the proportion of nurses and health visitors who are non-UK nationals, which now stands at a quarter of the total, up from around one in six in December 2016.

Julie Dawes, chief nurse at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “At Hampshire Hospitals we are incredibly proud of the diversity of our staff and the expert care they provide. Being able to draw on such broad range of experiences – personal and professional – is one of our greatest strengths.

“We have actively sought to recruit internationally and are very grateful to the colleagues who have chosen to come and work with us from all over the world. They are integral to how we deliver care to our patients and are highly valued members of Team HHFT."

Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive of NHS Providers, the membership organisation for NHS trusts, said the figures show “just how much our severely understaffed NHS relies on dedicated people from all over the world to deliver high-quality care to patients”.

Ms Cordery continued: “The stark reality is that the NHS just doesn’t have enough staff, putting patients’ safety at risk by affecting the care that overstretched staff can provide."