Foreign doctors \u2013 including from south Asia \u2013 are increasingly filling shortages in the NHS as the proportion of medics hired from within the UK has gone down over the past seven years, analysis by the BBC has revealed.<\/p>\n
International doctors accounted for 34 per cent of the recruitment in 2021, up from a modest 18 per cent in 2015, NHS workforce data, analysed by the BBC\u2019s Shared Data Unit revealed.<\/p>\n
The proportion of homegrown doctors hired during the same period declined to 58 per cent from 69 per cent.<\/p>\n
The pattern was similar for UK nurses whose share of recruitment declined from 74 per cent in 2015 to 61 per last year as the country continued to grapple with a workforce crisis.<\/p>\n
While the government said the number of doctors had risen 34 per cent since 2010, there have been calls to reduce the \u201cdisproportionate reliance\u201d on international recruits.<\/p>\n
The nationalities of the medical professionals coming to the UK from the rest of the world are not clear from the data, but experts have previously warned the recruitment of doctors and nurses from developing countries like India and Pakistan amounted to \u201cpoaching\u201d.<\/p>\n
The share of professionals from the European Union and European Economic Area leaving NHS England went up consecutively during 2015-2018. The trend was also similar for nationals from the rest of the world between 2015 and 2021.<\/p>\n
According to the British Medical Association (BMA), the NHS faced a challenge in retaining overseas staff because of the \u201cfinancial and bureaucratic barriers\u201d they faced.<\/p>\n
Its international committee chair, Kitty Mohan, said the NHS data illustrated the workforce emergency facing the NHS, which has become \u201cincreasingly dependent on international recruitment\u201d. He blamed the \u201cchronic staffing shortages\u201d on the lack of effective workforce planning by the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NHS has grown heavily reliant on doctors from overseas who have and continue to make an enormous contribution to our health service. This was evidenced during the pandemic as international doctors were front and centre of the battle on the NHS frontline \u2013 with a disproportionate number sadly losing their lives to the virus,\u201d Mohan said.<\/p>\n
His deputy at the BMA, Amit Kochhar, pointed out the financial issues overseas recruits faced.<\/p>\n
He said medical graduates were charged up to \u00a32,400 to apply for indefinite leave to remain and their dependents also faced the same fee.<\/p>\n
Kamal Sidhu, a GP partner working across two practices in County Durham highlighted the challenges foreign-origin professionals face in the UK.<\/p>\n
After 17 years working for the NHS since his relocation from India, Sidhu had been considering whether he needed to uproot his family to care for his sick father.<\/p>\n
He brought his parents to England last year, but their visitor visas expired in April. He waited six months for a decision about their ability to stay in the UK. That has now been granted.<\/p>\n
The doctor\u2019s wife works for the NHS as a dentist in Sunderland.<\/p>\n
Immigration rules were a disincentive to medical graduates to work in England\u2019s NHS, Sidhu said. This is in contrast with the immigration systems in Canada, Australia, New Zealand,<\/p>\n
France and Ireland which allowed dependent relatives to join health workers without the need for such visas, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are losing people who\u2019ve gained NHS experience and who we\u2019ve invested in, and in many cases senior consultants and very experienced GPs,\u201d Sidhu said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are torn apart going to bed at night worrying about what we would do if we did not get permission for my parents to stay in the UK. Between us, my wife and I, we have worked for 33 years for the NHS.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sons were born in England; they consider themselves English. Our lives, our social circle, friends \u2013 everything we\u2019ve worked for. We feel so disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Director for England, Patricia Marquis, said ministers must do more to reduce the \u201cdisproportionate reliance\u201d on international recruits.<\/p>\n
Chief executive of NHS Employers, Danny Mortimer, said it was \u201chigh time for the government to commit to a fully-funded, long-term workforce plan for the NHS\u201d to tackle \u201cchronic workforce shortages\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He said \u201crelentless demand\u201d was affecting staff due to vacancies which stood at around 110,000 \u2013 \u201cgaps which cannot and should not be filled through international recruitment alone\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the annual percentage decline in EU nationals joining the health service could have been down to more rigorous language tests introduced by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).<\/p>\n
International recruitment had \u201clong been part of the NHS workforce strategy\u201d, a spokesperson added, with around one in seven staff reporting as non-British.<\/p>\n
The DHSC also \u201crejected the assertion that immigration restrictions were a key reason for healthcare staff leaving the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n
There was \u201cno obligation on healthcare professionals to apply for [Indefinite Leave to Remain] and they could, under the new Points-Based System, remain in the UK on a Health and Care Visa which was a key promise of the government\u2019s manifesto\u201d, the department said.<\/p>\n
It added: \u201cThe government is committed to ensuring that the number of medical school places is in line with England\u2019s workforce requirements.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government has funded an additional 1,500 undergraduate medical school places each year for domestic students in England \u2013 a 25 per cent increase over three years \u2013 and there are record numbers of medical students in training.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you are in Africa and you want to work as health care worker or caregiver contact Ohakk 2 Consults on info@ohakkconsult.com and they will be able to help you secure a job in the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Foreign doctors \u2013 including from south Asia \u2013 are increasingly filling shortages in the NHS as the proportion of medics hired from within the UK has gone down over the past seven years, analysis by the BBC has revealed. International doctors accounted for 34 per cent of the recruitment in 2021, up from a modest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":24822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[1648,5274,3347,2735,9252,7665,75,5268,1953,9784,1279,8440,7396,9375,10391,11337,10873,12175,10537,5257,7663,1258,7712,159,9505,1195,5455,746,7664,5575,6225,2264,1132,6834,12634,6094,12773,5440,10954,6449,10832,6864,10779,5187,3570,7406,1504,12111,11973,3042,5485,2344,11625,7650,9583,6736,9253,5653,6047,12605,7231,3080,6348,5647,6585,3954,10415,36,594],"class_list":["post-24821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-fitness","tag-africa","tag-asia","tag-australia","tag-bbc","tag-bed","tag-bma-british-medical-association","tag-brexit","tag-british","tag-canada","tag-charged","tag-circle","tag-crisis","tag-data","tag-decline","tag-declined","tag-demand","tag-dependent","tag-developing-countries","tag-doctor","tag-doctors","tag-eea","tag-england","tag-english","tag-eu","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-family","tag-feel","tag-foreign-medics","tag-france","tag-friends","tag-government","tag-gps","tag-graduates","tag-health","tag-immigration","tag-increase","tag-india","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-manifesto","tag-ministers","tag-mortimer","tag-new-zealand","tag-nhs","tag-nurses","tag-nursing-and-midwifery-council","tag-ohakk-2-consults","tag-one","tag-pakistan","tag-pandemic","tag-patricia","tag-professionals","tag-recruitment","tag-recruits","tag-school","tag-sick","tag-social-care","tag-students","tag-uk","tag-union","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us","tag-visa","tag-visas","tag-will","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}