Foreign doctors in UK reluctant to work due to racism
Jeanette Dickson, chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, warned in an interview that overseas healthcare professionals now view the UK as an “unwelcoming, racist” country. She emphasized that the NHS “could quite easily fall over” without foreign-born staff and might soon lack “a critical mass of people there to run the service safely.”
Recent workforce data illustrate the issue, showing record numbers of foreign-born doctors leaving the NHS, a pause in post-Brexit recruitment from abroad, and a significant decline in the number of nurses and midwives joining the service. Around 42% of doctors in the UK qualified overseas, underscoring the NHS’s dependence on international personnel.
Dickson pointed to several deterrents for foreign staff, including hostile political rhetoric on immigration, negative media coverage, racist abuse by colleagues, and aggression from patients. “My feeling is we are creating a culture where the rhetoric is ‘foreigner bad,’” she said. “Why would you go somewhere where people are going, ‘we don’t need you, we don’t want you’? For them that makes Britain appear unwelcoming, racist.” She added that some foreign-born staff now feel unsafe in their daily routines.
Selina Douglas, chief executive of Whittington Health NHS Trust in London, corroborated these concerns, noting that long-serving overseas nurses have faced racial abuse, including incidents of being spat at while commuting. The comments highlight growing alarm over the impact of social hostility on the NHS workforce.
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