Foreign medics shunning NHS because of anti-migrant rhetoric, says top doctor | NHS

Foreign doctors and nurses are increasingly avoiding the NHS because anti-migrant rhetoric and rising racism have created “a hostile environment”, the head of Britain’s doctors has warned.

The health service is being put at risk because foreign health professionals increasingly view the UK as an “unwelcoming and racist” country, partly because of the government’s tough approach to immigration, Jeanette Dickson said.

Record numbers of foreign-born doctors are leaving the NHS and the post-Brexit increase in those coming to work there has stalled. At the same time, the number of nurses and midwives joining the NHS has fallen sharply over the past year.

Dickson is president of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which represents the professional interests of the UK and Ireland’s 220,000 doctors, including GPs, surgeons, anesthetists and emergency specialists.

She said that without the contribution of foreign doctors and nurses, the NHS “could very easily collapse” and be left without “a critical mass of people to run the service safely”.

Foreign-born doctors and nurses were discouraged by politicians’ antagonism towards migrants, media coverage of immigration, racist abuse of international medical graduates by their NHS colleagues and racist attacks by patients towards ethnic minority NHS staff, she said.

“My feeling is that we are creating a culture where the discourse is ‘bad towards foreigners’. If you’ve never visited Britain and you look at our media, social media, the press, the print media, what our politicians are saying, I think it’s not unreasonable to see that as a hostile environment,” Dickson, an NHS consultant clinical oncologist, told the Guardian.

“Because [foreign health staff] see Britain withdrawing from Europe, “we can go it alone”. They see attacks on synagogues, they see anti-Muslim protests. They see the narrative that immigration is bad, [that] Immigration is a major problem for the country.

“Why would you go to a place where people go, ‘we don’t need you, we don’t want you’? To them it makes Britain seem unwelcoming and racist. [hostility to migrants] is significantly more [than] 10 years ago.

Although the NHS has relied on foreign staff since its inception in 1948, this reliance has reached fever pitch. For example, 42% of all UK doctors are foreign qualified, according to figures from the General Medical Council (GMC).

The atmosphere in the UK towards migrants is now so unpleasant that some foreign-born NHS staff feel unsafe in their daily lives, Dickson added.

Selina Douglas, chief executive of the Whittington Health Trust in London, told a public meeting last month that hospital and community staff were facing a rise in racism.

Referring to foreign nurses who have worked here for 25 years, Douglas said: “These staff members are subject to racist abuse in our hospital. I have had staff members spitting while walking up the hill. [from the tube station].”

In a warning to abusive patients, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said last month that “your right to access free healthcare in this country does not come with the freedom to abuse our staff for any reason”. However, it is unclear what action the NHS or police take against patient abuse.

Workforce data collected by the GMC and the Nursing and Midwifery Council shows that more and more foreign medical and nursing graduates are “voting with their feet” by either not coming to the UK or going to work elsewhere, Dickson said.

She raised her concerns at the end of a year in which Streeting said NHS staff were often targets of “increasingly overt racism in the style of the 1970s and 1980s” and an NHS leader expressed alarm that black and Asian staff visiting patients’ homes had been “deliberately intimidated” by the placement of English flags.

She claimed the Labor government was partly to blame for doctors’ decisions not to come to Britain because it prioritized British medical graduates over those qualified overseas in the allocation of places in specialist medical training. This is a key issue, alongside pay, in England’s resident doctors dispute between ministers and the British Medical Association.

This could prove shortsighted, Dickson suggested, given that there is a global shortage of doctors, able to earn more money and enjoy an easier working life outside the UK.

She added: “You have a population that has retreated from internationalism because of Brexit. There is a secretary of state who also says ‘we would prioritize British graduates for jobs.’

“There has always been a cohort [of doctors] who have returned to their country of origin or to another country. It’s more worrying for me [is] the number of foreign graduates wishing to enter the country is also decreasing. And I think part of that is because of the prioritization argument that’s being made.

“Doctors have a lot of transferable skills, as do nurses. There is an international shortage [of both]. If the country doesn’t seem as welcoming, or if people don’t feel as safe, and Canada, Australia and New Zealand open their doors more, then I don’t find it surprising that people will leave.

Anti-migrant sentiment expressed by anonymous politicians could prompt so many overseas staff to quit that the NHS “could very easily collapse”, she warned.

“If we have significant overseas migration and we continue to say nationally that immigration is bad and we are prioritizing British graduates, then I fear we will not get to the point where we no longer have a critical mass of people to run the service safely.”

She said Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, and Streeting should make it clear to the public that foreign-born frontline NHS doctors and nurses were welcome because “they provide an invaluable service to patients but also to the NHS and their colleagues, because without them we would all be completely overwhelmed. Those who are already in the UK, we absolutely must welcome them and do everything we can to make them feel welcome.”

In response to Dickson’s remarks, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The NHS benefits enormously from its international staff, and we will continue to support and attract talented overseas staff who are willing to devote their time, energy and skills to the health service.

“Discrimination against patients and staff undermines everything our health service stands for – and the NHS has zero tolerance for racism. »

They added: “However, the failure to train enough healthcare professionals has left us reliant on international recruitment to fill the gaps. It is only right that UK taxpayers see a return on their investment in training local medical talent. This is why our 10-year health plan commits to prioritizing UK medical graduates and others who have worked in the NHS for significant periods of time for specialist training roles.”