The NHS is at risk of widening staffing gaps as record numbers of overseas-trained doctors leave the UK, with hostility towards migrants being blamed for the exodus.
In total, 4,880 doctors qualified in other countries left the UK in 2024. This is a 26% increase on the 3,869 who did so the previous year, according to figures from the General Medical Council.
Graph showing the number of doctors leaving the UK over 10 years.
NHS leaders, chief doctors and the GMC have warned that increasing denigration and abuse of immigrants in the UK is a key reason why more foreign health workers are leaving the country.
It is truly worrying that so many highly skilled and valuable international doctors are leaving, which the NHS cannot afford to lose, said Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of Hospital Group NHS Providers.
There would be no NHS if we had not recruited talented and valuable people from around the world over the years. The diversity of the NHS workforce is one of its greatest strengths.
Dr Amit Kochhar, chair of the British Medical Association's representative body, said: Overseas-trained doctors have long been a vital part of the NHS workforce and without them, Britain's health service would have been long gone.
But as we warned together with other unions last month, the ongoing campaign of anti-immigrant rhetoric has left many doctors with migrant backgrounds wondering whether it is worth it for them to remain.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting warned this month that NHS staff were bearing the brunt of a return to 1970s and 1980s-style racism in Britain, where racism is socially acceptable.
The rise in people leaving overseas doctors has coincided with a decline in the number of people coming to work in the UK, according to the healthcare regulator's annual report on the state of medical education and practice in the UK in 2024. The 20,060 people registered on England's medical registers last year were slightly more than the 19,629 registered in 2023 and the smallest increase since 2020.
The GMC's findings have raised concerns because the NHS relies too heavily on doctors from elsewhere, with 42% of the total health workforce qualified overseas.
GMC CEO Charlie Massey said doctors were a mobile workforce with skills in demand globally.
Historically, internationally qualified doctors who choose to work in the UK may choose to leave if they feel there is no professional progress there in the future or if they feel the country is less welcoming, he said.
As the rhetoric hardens and support evaporates, Britain's image as a place where the best and brightest in the world want to work could be tarnished.
Last month, the Royal College of Nursing highlighted a recent surge in the number of nurses experiencing racist abuse at work.
The stagnation in foreign doctors coming to the UK may be due to the fact that it is becoming more difficult for such medics to find work, the GMC said. Statistics show that only one in eight people registered in England last year with a link to a designated body gained a position within the NHS within six months. It decreased to one in five in 2023 and one in four in 2022.
A lack of places for early career doctors to begin training in their chosen medical specialty has led the government to allocate more doctors to UK-trained medical staff.
But the GMC's report warns ministers that this approach could be misguided by discouraging overseas doctors from moving to the UK, linked to difficulties finding work.
It is important to have a workforce policy across all four. [UK] Massey and GMC chair Professor Carrie MacEwen wrote that countries do not unintentionally demoralize or drive out the talent that underpins our health services.
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