When a UK hospital issued a press release praising its new intake of Portuguese nurses, it had no idea how the story would develop. News services up and down the country got creative and made out that Portuguese nurses were, in the end, far more caring than their British counterparts. The Royal College of Nurses got the hump – and the UK hospital decided to close ranks.
“That’s it!”, communications officer Diane Matthews told the Algarve Resident when we called to follow up a glowing press report in the Sunday Times. “We’ve decided we should stop talking about this. It’s pulling the staff away from their work; distracting them”, and, yes, she agreed, the initially innocuous press release had become a bit of a political hot potato, with the Portuguese nurses “uncomfortable” with the attention they were receiving. “They simply want to get on with their jobs…”
It all started with a very positive story in the Sunday Times under the headline: NHS’s foreign nurses ‘best at caring’.
It intimated that British nurses were nothing like as cosy with their bedside manners as the male and female nurses hired from Portugal.
“Head nurses have been impressed by the compassion and caring ethos of their southern European recruits who, they say, view nursing as a vocation and reflect their culture of close family ties and respect for elderly relatives,” wrote the newspaper.
It continued: Nichole Day, executive chief nurse at West Suffolk Hospital, said: “They are particularly good with the care of the elderly. I think this is because of their family network. They look after each generation, unlike England where the family unit has been diluted. You hopefully go into nursing for a reason, to care and to make a difference. It is definitely there in British nurses, but it is not necessarily as standardised as I experience with the Portuguese nurses.”
Maria Bentley, a clinical lead and chairwoman of the nursing and midwifery taskforce group for Nottingham University Hospitals, agreed.
“They are very respectful of elderly people and have a real empathy. I have had consultants come up to me and commenting, which is unusual, saying: “The two Portuguese nurses we have got on our care of the elderly ward are lovely; they have their arm around the patient; they ooze compassion,” she said.
“You cannot fake that. It is inherent in them. I think it has changed here (in Britain). I do not think nursing is as much a vocation as it used to be.”
These words, underneath a picture-perfect photo of two smiling Portuguese in hospital uniform (Ana Luisa Barreiros and Bruno Fernandes), backfired big-time with British nurses. Dr Peter Carter, chief executive officer of the Royal College of Nursing, was swift to defend the professionalism of homegrown SRNs, saying: “People say that nurses don’t care anymore, but we know that the vast, vast majority do” – thus West Suffolk Hospital’s decision to backtrack.
“We don’t want to move with this anymore. It has run its course,” Diane Matthews reiterated her hospital’s reluctance to blow their Portuguese trumpet further.
Meantime, hospitals throughout Britain continue to hire foreign nurses because of a shortage of qualified British staff, says the Sunday Times. The reality has been a huge boon to Portuguese men and women who cannot find work in hospitals in this country.
By NATASHA DONN [email protected]
Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK
Do you have a view on this story? Please email [email protected]
