More than 7,500 former
NHS staff have heeded the government’s call to rejoin the health service and help tackle the coronavirus outbreak. They include about 5,633 nurses and midwives and 1,930 doctors.
Matt Hancock told MPs on Monday that 7,563 clinical staff had applied to come back into the NHS by seeking to rejoin the register for their professions.
The returning clinicians are one of the main elements of the NHS’s drive to expand its workforce in readiness for dealing with the large number of people the Covid-19 virus will leave seriously ill.
Updating the Commons about staffing numbers, the health secretary said: “7,563 clinicians have so far answered our call to return to work, including members of this house, and I want to pay tribute to every single one of them.
“These are difficult times and they have risen to the call of the nation’s needs and we know that many more will join them.”
All 18,000 final-year nursing students in England are also being asked to work in hospitals to help expand the workforce, and junior doctors training as psychiatrists are also being transferred to work in acute hospitals for the forseeable future in some parts of England.
MPs among the returnees include the Conservatives’ Maria Caulfield, a former NHS cancer nurse, who plans to work at a hospital in her Lewes constituency. Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, who succeeded Sadiq Khan as the MP for Tooting when he became mayor of London in 2016, is returning to her former role as an A&E doctor at St George’s hospital in her constituency. Dr Kieran Mullan, the Tory MP for Crewe and Nantwich, is also returning to his role as a doctor in a hospital emergency department.
Former Lib Dem cabinet minister Sir Ed Davey said there were many qualified healthcare professionals in the UK’s refugee community.
He added: “I’ve spoken to a refugee charity,
RefuAid, who says they have 514 qualified healthcare professionals on their books – people who are willing to work, fully qualified in their own country, but there are bureaucratic barriers to them coming forward.”
Hancock said he would examine the details, noting there was a need to make sure people were capable of doing the required work.
The coronavirus bill
currently going through parliament provides for the emergency registration of health and social care professionals including nurses, midwives, paramedics and social workers.
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