Record figures of overseas-trained physicians are quitting the UK, leaving the NHS at danger of huge shortages in its staffing, with hostility towards migrants being cited for the departure.
Sharp Rise in Exits
Altogether, 4,880 doctors who trained in overseas 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.
Healthcare executives, experienced physicians and the GMC warned that growing denigration of and mistreatment directed at migrants in the UK was a major reason for the increase in foreign medics leaving.
Sector Leaders Voice Concern
“It’s extremely worrying that so many highly skilled and much appreciated overseas physicians the NHS just cannot do without are departing in their large numbers,” said a hospitals group chief executive.
“We wouldn’t have an NHS if we hadn’t for many years recruited skilled and valued people from all around the world. The diversity of the NHS staff is one of its biggest strengths.”
Dr Amit Kochhar stated: “Physicians who trained abroad have long made up a substantial portion of the NHS staff, and healthcare in the UK would have already withered away without them.”
“But as we alerted last month, a sustained trend of anti-migrant language is leaving many doctors with a international background questioning if it is valuable to remain.”
Political and Oversight Reaction
The health secretary expressed concern this month that NHS staff were suffering the impact of a resurgence to 1970s and 1980s-style discrimination in Britain where it is “socially acceptable 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 condition of medical education and practice in the UK for 2024 showed.
Workforce Data and Trends
- Over twenty thousand who joined the UK medical register in 2024 were just slightly higher than the 19,629 who did so in 2023.
- This represented the lowest growth since 2020.
- The GMC’s findings have raised concern because the NHS is so heavily reliant on doctors from abroad – 42% of its whole medical workforce qualified internationally.
“Internationally qualified doctors who have historically chosen to work in the UK could very possibly decide to depart if they believe they have limited career advancement here, or if the country seems unfriendly,” stated the GMC’s chief executive.
“Any hardening of rhetoric and decline of backing could undermine the UK’s image as somewhere the brightest and the best from all over the world would want to work.”
Employment Challenges and Government Effects
The plateauing in foreign doctors arriving to the UK may be because such medics are finding it harder to secure employment, the GMC explained.
- Only one in eight who became registered in the UK in 2024 “connected to a NHS post” – ie, secured a position within the NHS – within six months.
- That was down on the 20% who did so in 2023 and one in four in 2022.
The lack in places available for early-career doctors to begin training in their chosen specialty has led the government to assign a greater share of them to UK-trained doctors.
But the GMC’s report alerts policymakers that that strategy, combined with the challenge of finding a job, may be ill-advised by deterring overseas doctors from moving to the UK.
“It is vital that workforce plans throughout all four [UK] nations do not inadvertently discourage or push away the talent on which our medical system depend”, wrote the GMC chief and the GMC chair.
