According to the Ordem dos Enfermeiros (OE), Portugal’s nursing council, in 2014 a total of 2,082 nurses applied for permission to work abroad, an average of 5.7 health workers a day, and the majority of them came from the southern half of Portugal.


Region-wise the majority of requests to work overseas came from nurses registered in southern Portugal (1,009), followed by central Portugal (617), the north (345), Madeira (82) and the Azores (29).


That figure, however, is slightly lower than the number registered the year before, in 2013, when 2,516 nurses left Portugal in search of greener pastures. Last year, 17.3 percent fewer nurses emigrated than during the 12 months before, inverting a growth noted since at least 2010.


In a statement the OE said “Europe continues to be the main destination chosen by the overwhelming majority of [Portuguese] nurses who decide to emigrate”, with the biggest recipient countries being the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland, in that order.
The council further stressed that, for the most part, health workers who opt to emigrate are “professionals at the start of their careers, with some experience.
“But a substantial number of nurses in the 30s to 40s age groups are also opting to go abroad, many of whom are highly specialised.”
Dr. Sérgio Gonçalves, national director of the Portugal-based Jobabroad healthcare human resources recruitment company, told The Portugal News this week that the OE’s figures “do not reflect the exact number of nurses leaving the country”, as many start proceedings with a view to leaving Portugal at a later date.
Based in Oporto, Jobabroad has more than 3,000 applicants in its database and has noticed a rise in the number of people looking to work abroad.


“Our company has seen an increase in the demand for opportunities abroad”, Dr. Gonçalves reiterated, adding of its applicants, doctors and nurses: “About 80 percent are from the North of Portugal and most of the professionals leaving are without doubt from interior regions of Portugal, however, there has been a slight increase from the South, but this increase is due to emerging markets in Dubai and the Middle East.”


In Dr. Gonçalves’ opinion, this country’s health workers are seeking employment overseas “not only because of a lack of jobs or low employment status” in Portugal, but also “due to the fact that abroad (UK and Ireland) are countries where health professionals are acknowledged and are better paid.”


In Portugal, he says, health workers starting out receive around €5 per hour “and the UK around €17 per hour in the early stages”, and “there are cases in which nurses have quit Portuguese hospitals to go to work in the UK or Ireland, where they can receive a salary up to four times higher than what they receive in Portugal per hour.”


In two years, the company has successfully placed more than 100 Portuguese health workers abroad, “who today are satisfied and fulfilled by being recognised as health professionals, whereas in Portugal that is hard to achieve.”


Jobabroad’s national director corroborates that the countries most sought after by Portuguese nurses are “without doubt” the UK and Ireland, largely due to “the ease of language, and by the fact that the British health service has an excellent reputation among Portuguese nurses.”


Portuguese doctors, he says, are looking to the Middle East, where their salaries there can reach up to €15,000 a month.
Meanwhile, a recent report published last month in the East Anglian Daily Times went some way to dispelling suggestions that Portuguese nurses who head to the UK may struggle to settle in.


Under the headline “New Portuguese nurses at West Suffolk Hospital say they love the area”, the piece went on to stress how “figures suggesting that overseas nurses are struggling to settle in west Suffolk disguise what has actually been a success story for West Suffolk Hospital and its new Portuguese recruits”, according to the hospital.


Earlier that month the newspaper had reported how “about 18 percent of nurses hired during a recruitment trip to Portugal in 2012/13 have already left the trust.”


But, Jan Bloomfield, executive director of workforce and communications at West Suffolk hospital told EADT, those figures “do not begin to tell the whole story”.


Nursing staff who had relocated to Suffolk from Portugal also spoke to the publication of “the warm welcome they received in the community.”


According to the EADT, West Suffolk Hospital recruited 82 qualified nurses from Portugal “following a national shortage of home-grown nurses”, and as the Portuguese professionals’ degree course “is very similar to the UK.


“Many also have particular expertise in the care of older people, ideal for the population of west Suffolk”, it stated.


In related news, the Daily Mail also recently reported on how up to 80,000 British students each year cannot find places on nursing courses even though the NHS is hiring thousands from abroad.


In the piece, published mid-December 2014, Dr Peter Carter of the Royal College of Nursing accused the Government of “lamentable workforce planning” as it emerged four out of five new NHS nurses are foreign, with managers flying to Spain and Portugal to hire up to 50 at a time.


The article further claimed “it costs the NHS £70,000 to train a nurse for three years – but for the same amount it could hire three qualified foreigners on an average salary of £23,000.”


According to the newspaper almost 6,000 new NHS nurses were recruited from abroad in the 12 months up to September 2013, “many from Spain and Portugal”, which it says was a four-fold rise on figures from the previous 12 months.