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

Foreign doctors and nurses are increasingly avoiding National Health Service because anti-migrant rhetoric and rising racism have created a “hostile environment”, a British medical leader has warned.

The health service is under threat as overseas health workers increasingly view Britain as an “unwelcoming, racist” country, partly due to the government's hard-line approach to immigration, Janette Dixon has said.

Record number of foreign-born doctors leaving the National Health Service and growth in the number of people coming to the country to work after Brexit has stalled. At the same time, the number of nurses and midwives entering the NHS fell sharply over the past year.

Dixon is chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which represents the professional interests of 220,000 doctors in the UK and Ireland, including general practitioners, surgeons, anesthetists and emergency physicians.

She said that without the contribution of foreign doctors and nurses, the National Health Service “could easily collapse” and find itself without a “critical mass of people who could safely run the service”.

Foreign-born doctors and nurses are put off by politicians' antagonism towards migrants, media coverage of immigration, racist abuse of foreign medical graduates by NHS colleagues and racist aggression from patients towards NHS staff from minority ethnic backgrounds, she said.

“I think we're creating a culture where the rhetoric is 'foreigner is bad'. If you've never been to Britain and you look at our media, social media, the press, the print media, what our politicians say, I think it's quite reasonable to view it as a hostile environment,” Dixon, a consultant clinical oncologist with the NHS, told the Guardian.

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

“Why would you go where people go: 'We don't need you, we don't need you'? For them, it makes Britain unwelcoming, racist. The prevalence of this phenomenon [hostility to migrants] much more [than] 10 years ago.”

Although the National Health Service has relied on foreign staff since its creation in 1948, this dependence has reached its peak. For example, 42% of all UK doctors were trained overseas. General Medical Council (GMC) data shows.

The climate in Britain towards migrants is now so bad that some foreign-born NHS staff feel unsafe in their daily lives, Dixon added.

Selina Douglas, chief executive of the Whittington Medical Trust in London, told a public meeting last month that hospital and community staff were experiencing an increase in racism.

Referring to foreign nurses who have worked here for 25 years, Douglas said: “These staff are being racially abused in our hospital. I was spat on by staff as I walked up the hill.” [from the tube station]”

In a warning to abused patients, Health Minister Wes Streeting said last month that “your right to access free healthcare in this country is not coupled with the freedom to abuse our staff on any grounds.” However, it is unclear what the NHS trusts or police action to prevent patient abuse.

Labor force data collected by the GMC and Care and the Midwifery Council show that more and more international medical and nursing graduates are “voting with their feet”, either by not coming to the UK or by going elsewhere to work, Dixon said.

She raised her concerns at the end of the year when Streeting said NHS staff often become targets of increasingly overt “1970s, 1980s style racism.” and the boss of an NHS trust expressed alarm that black and Asian staff visiting patients' homes were being “deliberately intimidated” by placing flags of England.

She argued that the Labor government was partly to blame for doctors choosing not to come to Britain because it prioritized British medical graduates over those qualified overseas when allocating places for specialist medical training. This is a key issue along with wages in resident doctors dispute in England between ministers and the British Medical Association.

This may prove short-sighted, Dixon suggested, given there is a worldwide shortage of doctors who can earn more money and enjoy an easier working life outside the UK.

She added: “There is a population that has retreated from internationalism because of Brexit. There is a Secretary of State who also says: 'We will give preference to British graduates when looking for jobs.'

“There has always been a cohort [of doctors] who have returned to their country of origin or another country. I'm more worried [is] The number of foreign graduates wishing to come to the country is also decreasing. And I think part of it has to do with the argument being made about priorities.

“Doctors, like nurses, have many portable skills. There is an international shortage [of both]. If the country doesn't look as welcoming or people don't feel as safe, and Canada, Australia and New Zealand are increasingly opening their doors, then I wouldn't be surprised that people are leaving.”

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

“If we have significant outward migration and continue to talk nationally about how immigration is bad and 'we're prioritizing UK graduates', then I do worry that we'll get to the point where there won't be a critical mass of people there who can run the service safely.”

She said Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Streeting must make it clear to the public that foreign-born NHS doctors and nurses are welcome because “they provide an invaluable service to patients, and to the NHS and their colleagues, because without them we would all be completely snowed in. We absolutely need to make those already in the UK feel welcome and go out of our way to make them feel welcome.”

Responding to Dixon's comments, a Department spokesperson Health and Social Care said: “The NHS benefits enormously from its international workforce and we will continue to support and attract talented overseas staff who want to dedicate their time, energy and skills to healthcare.

“Discrimination against both patients and staff undermines everything our health service stands for and the NHS does not tolerate racism.”

They added: “However, failure to train enough medical professionals has led us to rely on international recruitment to fill the gaps. It is right that UK taxpayers should see a return on the investment they make in training homegrown medical talent, which 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 roles.”

In November, in a joint Guardian interview with National Health Service England chief executive Jim McKee and Wes Streeting said he was “shocked” to hear NHS staff, particularly those working in emergency departments, talk about rising levels of harassment, aggression and violence when their care is delayed.

“Even if you have to wait a long time, which I know is frustrating, or you feel like you're being sent from pillar to post, which unfortunately happens, there's no excuse for taking it out on employees,” Streeting said.

“But what shocked me the most was the rising tide of racism and how 1970s, 1980s style racism seems to have become acceptable again in this country. I'm really shocked at how it's affecting NHS staff now,” he said.