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Record numbers of overseas-trained doctors are leaving the UK, placing the NHS at risk of significant shortages in its workforce, with hostility towards migrants being blamed for the departure.

Significant Rise in Departures

In all, 4,880 doctors who qualified in overseas left the UK during 2024 – a rise of 26% on the 3,869 who did so the previous year – figures from the General Medical Council show.

NHS leaders, senior doctors and the General Medical Council warned that growing criticism of and mistreatment directed at migrants in the UK was a major factor for the increase in foreign medics departing.

Industry Leaders Express Concern

“It’s extremely worrying that so many well-trained and highly valued international doctors the NHS just cannot do without are departing in their droves,” said a hospitals group chief executive.

“We wouldn’t have an NHS if we had not for many years recruited talented and appreciated individuals from overseas. The variety of the NHS staff is one of its biggest strengths.”

Dr Amit Kochhar said: “Physicians who qualified abroad have long made up a substantial portion of the NHS staff, and medical care in the UK would have long since withered away without them.”

“But as we alerted last month, a sustained campaign of hostile language is leaving many doctors with a migrant background considering if it is valuable to remain.”

Political and Oversight Response

Wes Streeting voiced alarm this month that NHS staff were suffering the impact of a resurgence to historical racism in Britain where it is “socially acceptable to be racist”.

The rise in foreign physicians leaving occurred alongside a levelling-off in the number arriving to work in Britain, the GMC’s annual report on the condition of medical education and work in the UK for 2024 indicated.

Staffing Data and Patterns

• Over twenty thousand who entered the UK medical register last year were just slightly higher than the 19,629 who did so in 2023.
• This represented the lowest increase since 2020.
• The GMC’s findings have caused alarm because the NHS is so heavily dependent on physicians from abroad – 42% of its entire medical workforce trained overseas.

“Internationally qualified doctors who have traditionally opted to work in the UK could quite conceivably choose to leave if they feel they have limited career advancement here, or if the country feels unfriendly,” stated Charlie Massey.

“Any hardening of rhetoric and decline of backing could undermine the UK’s reputation as somewhere the most talented individuals from all over the world would want to work.”

Job Difficulties and Government Impact

The plateauing in foreign doctors arriving to the UK may be because such medics are having difficulty to secure employment, the GMC said.

1. Only one in eight who became registered in the UK in 2024 “found a NHS post” – ie, got a post within the NHS – within six months.
2. That was down on the 20% who did so in 2023 and 25% in 2022.

The lack in positions offered for junior doctors to start training in their selected medical specialism has led the authorities to allocate a greater share of them to UK-trained doctors.

But the GMC’s report warns policymakers that that strategy, allied to the challenge of finding a job, may be ill-advised by deterring international physicians from relocating to the UK.

“It is crucial that staffing policies throughout all four [UK] nations do not accidentally demoralise or drive out the skilled professionals on which our health services depend”, stated Massey and the GMC chair.