• Nurse shortage feared after UK eases employment rules
  • 12.05.2011

Great Britain is easing recruitment requirements for nurses from new EU member states, which may leave Poland facing yet another brain drain, this time in the health sector.

 

While Polish hospitals are already lacking at least 50,000 nurses, several thousand more of them could up and leave for Britain.

 

Until now, staff from new EU member countries, whose qualifications were not automatically recognized, were required to do half a year’s training. In line with the new regulations, a two-day skills test is enough to get a job, writes the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily.

 

Around 12,000 Polish nurses have migrated for economic reasons since Poland’s entry into the European Union in 2004, according to estimates by a nurse’s trade union.

 

A decreasing number of young Poles are opting for the profession, says Elżbieta Buczkowska, head of the Main Chamber of Nurses and Midwives, who argues that low pay is one factor turning people away from nursing.

 

“Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to convince the health minister that so long as the minimum wage is not set at the level of the national average in an employment contract, youth will not choose a job that offers 1,400 – 1,600 zloty [an equivalent of around 360 – 400 euro] basic pay,” stressed Buczkowska.

 

In March, several nurses carried out a hunger strike at the Lower House of Parliament, while around half a thousand nurses protested in front of the Parliament building in Warsaw.

 

The protesters demanded the resumption of employment contracts as the sole binding form of taking on the professional group in hospitals, which, they claim, has been detrimental to both nurses and patients.

 

While up to 220,000 nurses are registered in Poland, 200,000 of them being professionally active, as many as 15,000 Polish nurses work abroad. (ab)