TVScope BBC 1 Real Story: Nurses on the RunThursday, 22nd March, 7pm
Why do nurses leave Britain's NHS hospitals to work in Australia? Could it be that they do so out of disillusionment with the health services as we are asked to believe in this documentary? Or could be that, as one honestly put it, Australia wins out every time when you compare the attractions of the Great Barrier Reef with Norfolk?
No doubt nurses in the NHS, as in Ireland, are disillusioned by deficits in the health services. No doubt they feel unappreciated and underpaid by the health system.
But nurses have always been travellers. They are in a profession in which you can, indeed, see the world, and many do.
That fact, combined with the lure of countries such as Australia and the US, makes it all the more important to value nurses.
One of the nurses in the programme, Rob Carey, had been working as a community nurse for the NHS when his job disappeared due to cutbacks and he had to return to the wards.
That was a move he really, really didn't want. At about the same time, a hospital in Cairns, Australia, was targeting nurses working for NHS trusts which were experiencing cutbacks. The result, needless to say, was that Rob, a genuinely caring and committed nurse, took the plane to Australia.
The programme, presented by Fiona Bruce, followed him and another nurse, Sarah, through their early weeks in Australia. Though Rob was missing England and his friends, he was genuinely excited at the scope for community nursing in Australia.
Sarah was also disillusioned by the NHS. In fact, Sarah did so much complaining about the NHS during the programme that you began to wish she would shut up. As she sat outdoors on a balmy summer evening sipping a cocktail she complained, yet again, that the NHS had forced her to move to Australia.
To be honest, the programme got a bit boring after a while. As you watched Sarah circling newspaper ads in a bid to get an apartment you wondered why, exactly, you were watching. That's unless you are a nurse mulling over the possibility of moving to Australia. If you are, you can watch the programme again on the BBC website.
If the impression given by this programme is accurate, working conditions in Australian hospitals are far superior, for nurses, to those here.
Pity the patients can't move to Australia too.