Record Numbers of Overseas-Trained Doctors Departing the UK, Creating Serious NHS Staffing Worries
Record figures of overseas-trained physicians are quitting the UK, leaving the National Health Service at danger of significant shortages in its staffing, with hostility towards migrants being blamed for the departure.
Sharp Increase in Exits
Altogether, 4,880 physicians who trained in another country left the UK during 2024 – a rise of 26% on the 3,869 who did so the previous year – data from the medical regulator show.
NHS leaders, senior doctors and the GMC cautioned that increased denigration of and mistreatment directed at international staff in the UK was a major reason for the rise in foreign medics leaving.
Industry Leaders Express Concern
“It’s extremely worrying that so many highly skilled and highly valued international doctors the NHS just can’t afford to lose are leaving in their large numbers,” said Daniel Elkeles.
“We could not operate an NHS if we hadn’t for many years recruited talented and appreciated people from overseas. The variety of the NHS staff is one of its biggest assets.”
Dr Amit Kochhar said: “Physicians who qualified overseas have for many years made up a significant sector of the NHS staff, and healthcare in the UK would have long since collapsed without them.”
“But as we warned last month, a sustained trend of anti-migrant rhetoric is leaving many doctors with a international heritage considering if it is worth staying.”
Government and Oversight Reaction
Wes Streeting voiced alarm this month that NHS employees were suffering the impact of a return to 1970s and 1980s-style racism in Britain where it is “tolerated to be racist”.
The rise in foreign physicians leaving coincided with a levelling-off in the figure coming to work in Britain, the GMC’s yearly analysis on the state of medical education and practice in the UK for 2024 showed.
Staffing Statistics and Trends
- Over twenty thousand who joined the UK medical register last year were just slightly higher than the 19,629 who did so in 2023.
- This formed the lowest growth since 2020.
- The GMC’s findings have caused alarm because the NHS is so strongly reliant on physicians from elsewhere – 42% of its entire doctor staff trained overseas.
“Overseas-trained doctors who have traditionally opted to work in the UK could very possibly choose to leave if they feel they have limited career advancement here, or if the nation feels unfriendly,” said Charlie Massey.
“Any intensification of discourse and falling away of backing could damage the UK’s image as a place the brightest and the best from globally would want to work.”
Employment Challenges and Policy Effects
The plateauing in foreign doctors coming to the UK may be because such doctors are finding it harder to secure employment, the GMC explained.
- Just 12.5% who became registered in the UK in 2024 “connected to a NHS post” – that is, secured a post within the NHS – within six months.
- That was down on the 20% who did so in 2023 and one in four in 2022.
The shortage in places available for early-career doctors to start specializing in their selected medical specialism has prompted the government to allocate more of them to domestically qualified medics.
But the GMC’s analysis alerts policymakers that that approach, combined with the difficulty of finding a job, may be misguided by deterring international physicians from relocating to the UK.
“It is vital that workforce plans throughout all four [UK] countries do not inadvertently demoralise or drive out the talent on which our health services rely”, wrote the GMC chief and the GMC chair.
