Nursing abroad: how recruiters are tempting UK staff to Canada

Billboards highlight the benefits of nurses working in British Columbia, including better pay, the chance of a more rewarding career and spectacular scenery

Giant billboards advertising jobs in Canada have been erected around the UK to tempt nurses to cross the Atlantic for a ‘better life’.

The digital adverts, which have been spotted at locations including London Waterloo and Glasgow Central train stations, seize on the comparative low pay and burnout of staff in the NHS. The wording states that ‘giving patients what they need shouldn’t take everything you’ve got’.

Another advert says: ‘Providing care for families should allow you to provide for yours.’

Canadian recruiters will tour UK

The campaign comes as nurse recruiters from British Columbia, a province in Canada that includes Vancouver, launch a tour of the UK on 11 May to sign up nurses to make the move from London, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast.

• RELATED: Surge in nurses fleeing England for better pay and lifestyle

Sharing the adverts on Twitter, one medic wrote that prime minister Rishi Sunak and health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins should take heed as valuable staff were being ‘poached from under their noses’.

Campaign says nurses can expect a ‘rewarding and dynamic career’

The recruiters promise that British Columbia ‘has a healthcare system that values and respects nurses and offers an outstanding variety of job opportunities’, along with chances to ‘sustain a rewarding, successful and dynamic career’.

They also highlight the area’s spectacular scenery, with access to beaches, forests and mountains to hike and ski.

RCN warns that nurses will leave unless pay and conditions improve

In March, the RCN issued warnings of a mass exodus of domestically and internationally trained nurses from the UK, after the college obtained data showing a surge in registrants applying for a certificate of current professional status, which is needed to work abroad.

• RELATED: Nurse retention: is your employer doing enough to keep you?

At the time, RCN general secretary Pat Cullen warned that with low pay and poor working conditions being the reality for nurses in the UK, many were looking elsewhere for employment.

She added: ‘Those working in health and care services want to be rewarded fairly and to deliver the level of care they were trained to.’

• RELATED: Would you quit your NHS job and move to sunny Western Australia?

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