As a hcsw wishing to go into medicine, I was kind of starting to think I would have a hurrah of foundation years before having to somehow give up the gmc registration and return to being a hcsw. I have witnessed a round of nursing students graduate (often on a flexi-nursing apprenticeship model of training), get gazumped by the healthboard making a mass hire of newly qualified international nurses, then not supported them, thrown them in the deep-end like a&e without proper mentorship, making them stressed - not considering the impact of a billingual environment, and leaving hcsws to pick up the pieces in perceived more grimy jobs (like last offices)....
Due to people completing their nursing course if they were previously healthcare assistants, they had trained themselves out of a job, as the healthboard wouldn't let them work as a lower band with a pin. It's the only hospital with a surrounding hospital desert so they were effectively screwed jobswise.
Its also been sad seeing stressed out F2s not get jobs, especially if people have really dreamed of living in the uk, but atleast if people are forewarned from the start for the challenge they might reconsider. There is also a lot of complaining about lack of training opportunites in the rural hospital - so I'm not actually certain a lot of F1s wanted to be posted there, and I think there's a lack of awareness of the toughness of the conditions, differences in access to imaging equipment and possible lack of progression that should really be communicated to IMGs...That said the local hospital would seemingly fall appart without all the sad, unhappy people tricked into a rural area.