This summer I will be working as part of a research team on the project ‘Making it to the Registers’ which aims to document the experience of  internationally-trained healthcare workers when registering to practice in the UK. It became evident during the COVID 19 pandemic the extent to which UK healthcare is on international workers. This has been the case especially since World War II and the establishment of the NHS. These crises and worker shortages led to the concept of ‘emergency registration’ being born. During World War II emergency registration was extended to Jewish refugee doctors and overseas qualified doctors from British Colonies. After the establishment of the NHS, nurses were actively recruited from overseas; for the most part from the Caribbean. These people would go on to become part of the Windrush generation. 

During my 6 weeks of research my main focus will be the registration of internationally-trained nurses in Britain. Having started reading some materials surrounding the subject I plan to produce a timeline of the key changes and events that impacted the registration of internationally-trained nurses. Then I will use resources such as Hansard and the newspaper archives to evaluate the impact and the public opinion surrounding these events. Furthermore I will research the difference between State-Enrolled Nurses and State-Registered Nurses and the impact this had on those nurses who had come from overseas to work in the NHS.