The good news is that nursing vacancies have fallen to a new low in England... the not so good news is this reflects the success of foreign recruitment (new nurses from abroad has risen five-fold in the five years to 2023).
While we can now (at least) fill the vacancies, this does not reflect (yet) any surge in training our own nurses, but continues our reliance on poaching staff from other health systems (which is not a great strategy, really).
Meanwhile in Nigeria, the health service has imposed a new two year working requirement before nurses qualifications will be validated for work abroad - a measure intended to stop the 'brain drain' of qualified nurses to other countries health care systems... prompting legal action from the nurses
Given the numbers of Nigerian nurses who have headed to the UK, this may prove yet one more factor in the NHS workforce planning problems....
The problem for a workforce plan for the NHS that includes a high dependency on incoming foreign staff, is that having once migrated for work, they will have little compunction about doing so again... having gained (valuable) experience in the NHS, but also have experienced the actuality of the NHS crisis, they often move on.
Unsurprisingly they are heading to countries were staff (nurses) are paid up to double what UK pays!