Recruitment of nurses from India and their experiences of an Overseas Nurses Program

Overseas recruitment has been vital to the contribution of staff growth in the National Health Service (NHS). In 2011, high nursing vacancy rates within critical care required that overseas nurses were recruited. The recruited nurses were placed in an Overseas Nurses Program (ONP), a course designed to assist overseas nurses in adapting to the NHS.

To describe the experiences of nurses recruited from India who participated in an ONP.

A qualitative, research approach was chosen to gather descriptions of the lived experiences of nurses from India transitioning to London, to work in critical care settings.

A descriptive qualitative approach was taken using in-depth, semi-structured and audio-taped interviews. They were conducted over a 69-day period (30 November 2012 to 6 February 2013) with 16 nurses from India. The nurses were questioned about challenges, experiences and differences; they were also asked to make suggestions for other nurses undertaking an ONP in the future. Interviews were transcribed verbatim into a formal written style with NVivo10.

Eleven females and five males aged 25-33 years who had completed up to four years of university training participated in this study. The themes extracted were autonomy and responsibility, language, culture (food and climate), loneliness and work challenges (ONP and essay writing). Participants identified that they would have benefited if pre-allocated mentors from non-English speaking countries who had previously been through the transition process were available to assist them with their personal and professional integration into a new country.

Autonomy disparity, language barriers and cultural differences need to be recognised and acknowledged by multi-disciplinary teams, by allowing sufficient time and additional support for non-English nurses undergoing ONPs.

Overseas nurses would benefit from being mentored by another nurse from a similar culture, with a non-English background. It may be feasible for overseas nurses to receive training in cultural competencies to improve disparities.