RCN responds to Conservatives' NHS visa announcement,
Responding to the Conservatives' NHS visa announcement, Dame Donna Kinnair, Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing said:
“Failure to train enough nurses is leaving NHS and social care short-staffed and forced us to recruit overseas in the short-term. A fairer immigration system is a key demand we’re making of politicians this election - valuing skills and not fixating on arbitrary targets – but the devil will be in the detail and we cannot be satisfied by rhetoric alone. The NHS doesn’t operate in isolation and nurses work in social care and many other places.
“But it is of deep regret that the Prime Minister is preserving the immoral and heartless charge for overseas nurses to use the same services they keep running. It should be abolished, not spread out every month.
“There are tens of thousands of unfilled nursing jobs and we need more ambitious plans than this to address it.”
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