Australian nurses offered jobs with NHS Grampian after recruitment drive down under
Last updated 22nd Jan 2018
Scores of nurses have been recruited to help fill vacancies across Grampian.
Almost 50 nurses from Australia have been offered positions following an international recruitment drive by the health board.
In addition to those already offered positions, there are more than 110 other interested candidates at various stages of training and experience who will be interviewed in the future.
The announcement comes after recruitment fairs in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Sydney during November.
Caroline Hiscox, Deputy Director of Nursing and Midwifery in Grampian, said: “We are thrilled, It been a huge success in many ways. That’s not just about the recruitment results, which exceeded all expectations, but also in the learning gained by visiting some hospitals there which had previously struggled with recruitment and have successfully turned that around.
“We set out hopeful that we could persuade ex-pats to consider returning to the UK but we were surprised to find that much of the interest actually came from Australian nurses.
“In the end, we interviewed 170 people and we have been able to offer 49 nursing positions so far. It’s still early in the recruitment process and obviously moving to the other side of the globe is a big step but, as things stand, 20 people have firm plans in place and will join us over the next few months. We expect those numbers to climb even further.”
Jenny Gibb, Associate Nurse Director, said: “There’s very clearly a wanderlust among a lot of Australians who want to come and experience other places. Our stand had lots of indormation about our area.
“Most people were only really familiar with Edinburgh, being the capital, but when we said we were two and half hours from there, they weren’t put off at all. They are used to travelling huge distances – in fact many of them had come three to four hours and flown to be at the events.”
NHS Grampian said plans are being put in place to offer each of the new staff a “buddy” to help them settle into their new roles.
The board are also in talks with Western Australian government, which has an over-provision of nurses, to bring some of its trainees over to Scotland to get clinical experience.