UK welcomes Middle East refugees to fill its vast nursing needs

Hundreds of nurses who lived in Lebanese refugee camps have joined a scheme to put them on the front line of Britain's NHS crisis

Nurse Alisar Alasi had been living in Lebanon's Nahr Al Bared refugee camp before moving to the UK. David Enders / The National; Alisar Alasi

When Alisar Alasi fled the war in Syria she was forced to live in a shipping container in Lebanon.

She and her family lived in fear, with violence regularly breaking out in the cramped camps, which were surrounded by Lebanese Army checkpoints and often had no electricity or running water.

Despite these circumstances, she was accepted to a scholarship scheme and achieved nursing qualifications but had work rights restricted due to her refugee status.

However, she was offered a professional and personal lifeline in the UK through a pilot scheme to offer refugees nursing jobs.

Britain has been opening its doors to hundreds of refugees fleeing war-torn homelands, offering them the chance of a new life using their skills.

Two years on, Ms Alasi, 25, has settled on the south coast in Portsmouth, a city by the sea to remind her of home. She is finally able to pursue her dream job.

“It is the best thing I have done, I have money to live on and I feel safe here,” she told The National.

NHS in crisis

Britain is not being wholly altruistic. Those travelling thousands of kilometres to take part in the scheme are helping the country tackle a crisis in its struggling National Health Service.

The UK is running a three-year pilot programme to attract refugees who are qualified healthcare workers to come and help solve its nursing shortage – which presently stands at more than 43,000 vacancies.

In recent months these vacancies have included more than 17,650 acute nursing jobs and more than 10,650 mental health nurse positions.

In 2019, the present government pledged to recruit 50,000 nurses as part of its election manifesto and by last September had recruited 51,245 additional nurses through international appointments and more training and educational pathways.

However, the Royal College of Nursing says patient waiting lists have grown 70 per cent since the target was set – four times faster than the number of nurses recruited.

The NHS has faced growing recruitment issues since the pandemic and last year the government published its £2.4 billion ($3.03 billion) five-year nursing plan and pledged to almost double the number of adult nurse training places by 2031, with about 24,000 more nurse and midwife training places a year.

With spiralling waiting lists, presently standing at 7.57 million, the NHS is once again a key issue in the coming UK election.

Filling the gap

Talent Without Boundaries, which has received more than £750,000 from government agencies since 2021, is one of the charities involved in the recruitment schemes and has successfully relocated more than 500 nurses and their families from places such as Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Afghanistan.

The majority of the nurses are Palestinian refugees who had been living in Lebanon.

Ms Alasi, who is Palestinian, arrived in Lebanon with her family when the war broke out in Syria.

She had been living initially with her sister and later her husband in two refugee camps in Lebanon – Beddawi and Nahr Al Bared.

Due to their refugee status they were unable to own property and were excluded from practising in more than 70 professions. Even with her qualifications, refugee nurses in Lebanon receive a salary of only $40 per month and face limited career progression.

Once she completed her nursing scholarship she then faced the challenge of finding work, until she joined the programme and relocated to the UK in 2022 to start a new life.

“I studied nursing because my mum had previously worked in a medical lab and I found I loved it,” she told The National.

“The camps where we were living were dangerous. Lebanon was very bad, there was no electricity and no fuel for us to be able to drive the car. We had issues getting water.

“The camps are not safe, there is a lot of violence because there is no security there, so when I heard about the scheme I decided to apply.”

Through the programme, Ms Alasi attended Liverpool's John Moores University, which has developed a specialist training course for nurses, allowing them to practise in the UK and bring their skills to the NHS.

She was then given a placement at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth and was joined by her husband after six months.

“I found it hard at first as I moved here on my own with no family or friends,” she said.

“At first I was crying a lot and missing everyone but once I started working that changed. I love it here.”

Audience with the king

Ahmad Theibich, 31, is a third-generation Palestinian refugee who was born and raised in Lebanon and had been working there as a nurse for eight years when he joined the programme and moved to the UK with his wife in 2021.

Within months he went from being on the scene at the heart of the devastating Beirut bomb blast – in which at least 218 people were killed when inadequately stored chemicals exploded at the Lebanese capital’s port in August 2020 – to speaking in the House of Lords and attending King Charles III’s 75th birthday at Buckingham Palace.

“It was strange,” he said.

“I never imagined any of this would happen. I was shocked.”

Due to the restraints placed on refugees he was not able to progress in his career in Lebanon and remained on a low wage.

“It is hard there because of the situation with being stateless,” he said.

“I experienced the challenges that come with being classified as a refugee, which significantly restricted my employment opportunities. Despite my qualifications and experience as a registered nurse, the options for development and progression at work were quite limited.

“This situation was undoubtedly frustrating, as I was eager to utilise my skills and make a meaningful contribution to the healthcare field.

“One of the most disheartening aspects of this period was the realisation that, despite my dedication and hard work, career progression remained elusive due to my Palestinian nationality.

“I decided to apply for the scheme. It was the first time I had ever left Lebanon.

“But when I came to the UK, after I finished getting my licence after three months I got registered as a staff nurse and in six months I was promoted to be a clinical nurse. It was an amazing feeling.

“After three months of being here, I was invited to speak at the House of Lords about our stories and I met the minister of immigration. Last November I was invited to Buckingham Palace for the king’s 75th birthday and I got to meet him.

“I was shocked to be invited and until I got there I didn’t quite believe it. It was an amazing experience to meet him and to speak to him. He shook my hand and thanked us for helping with the nursing crisis.”

Rabia Ceylan, UK health manager at Talent Beyond Borders, told The National the number of people registering for the scheme, which is free, has almost doubled in two years to more than 100,000.

“There has been huge demand, especially since Covid,” she said.

“We launched this programme a couple of years ago at the same time the NHS brought in a pilot to get 50,000 workers from overseas into the healthcare sector, so we 'piggybacked' off that. We have brought over 250 nurses and around 500 people, including their families.”

The organisation accepts applications from across the world but mainly from Jordan and Lebanon because of the working conditions. About 95 per cent of the nurses are Palestinians from that region, with others from Syria and Afghanistan, too.

Working restrictions for refugees make it a “breeding ground for people looking to leave”, she said.

“An NHS trust will come to us and say 'we need someone for this role' and we then do a skills match with the talent catalogue. We have had great feedback from the NHS and trusts that hire. [The nurses] move through the ranks quite quickly once they arrive.

“We help them come here and start entirely new lives, and usually when they get established they bring their families. They range from fresh graduates to people in their fifties that have been working in the industry a long time. It has been amazing to witness their journeys.”

Dr Ebenezer Dua Banahene, senior lecturer of adult nursing at Liverpool John Moores University, developed a course to upskill the nurses on their arrival.

“The team had a shared purpose, to develop a route for the ethical recruitment of overseas-trained nurses to work in the NHS,” he told The National.

“It was also clear that the team were all passionate about supporting displaced talent: registered nurses who could not return home yet could not currently practise in the UK. They were often in low-paid or casual jobs.”

The programme initially focused on the north-west of England and later spread across the rest of the country. It started with in-country refugees and later those abroad.

So far, six cohorts have gone through the programme across 50 NHS Trusts. Participants have come from Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, China, Myanmar, Swaziland, India, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan.

Mr Theibich said he has no regrets about leaving Lebanon and starting a new life in the UK and is urging other refugees to take the plunge.

“Probably the best thing about being here is that we are treated like humans, regardless of whether we are citizens or our religion or culture,” he said.

“I came in a cohort with other refugees and we have built our own community. We have made amazing friends and we love our new life.”

For Ms Alasi, she now finally feels settled in a place she can call home.

“There are many beautiful places here. I’m really enjoying it. I live by the sea and it reminds me of living by the sea in Lebanon,” she said.

“The only thing I miss is the weather. I’m not too keen on the British weather, it seems to rain a lot – even in the summer! But it's home and I love it.”