UK is ‘unwelcoming’ and ‘racist’ for overseas NHS health workers, warns top doctor
Foreign doctors and nurses are staying away from the NHS because of a “hostile environment” created by anti-immigrant rhetoric, according to the leader of UK medics.
Increasingly “unwelcome” and “racist” perceptions of the UK due to the government’s approach to immigration pose a risk to healthcare, according to Jeanette Dickson, president of the Academy of Royal Colleges of Medicine.
Ms Dickson, who heads the union representing 220,000 doctors in the UK and Ireland, including GPs, surgeons and anesthetists. said Guard: “In my opinion, we are creating a culture where the discourse of ‘foreign bad’ exists.
“If you’ve never visited Britain and you look at our media, social media, print media, print media, what our politicians say, I think it’s not unreasonable to see this as a hostile environment.”
He warned that the NHS could “easily collapse” and be left without “a critical mass of people to run the service safely”.
“Because [foreign health staff] “When they saw Britain withdrawing from Europe, ‘we can do this alone,'” he continued.
“They see attacks on synagogues, they see anti-Muslim protests, they see the rhetoric that immigration is bad, [that] “Immigration is a big problem for the country.”
He asked: “Why would you go to a place where people go, ‘We don’t need you, we don’t want you?’ It makes Britain unwelcoming, racist for them. The prevalence of that.” [hostility to migrants] significantly more [than] ten years ago.”
The 2025 workforce report by the UK General Medical Council found that 42 per cent of UK doctors are qualified overseas.
The report said: “If we see even a small percentage increase in the number of people leaving, our health services will end up with huge gaps that they will struggle to fill.”
But GMC data released last month revealed doctors trained abroad are leaving the NHS in record numbers.
But recent reports also suggest staff are facing increasing “1970s, 1980s-style” racist abuse in the health service, according to comments made by health secretary Wes Streeting last month.
“Even if there’s a long wait, which I know is frustrating, or you feel like you’re being moved from one assignment to another, which unfortunately happens, there’s no excuse for taking it out on the staff,” he said. Guard.
Mr Streeting added: “But what surprises me most is that racism is on the rise and 1970s, 1980s style racism is apparently becoming permissible again in this country. I’m really shocked that this is affecting NHS staff in this way now.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “The NHS benefits greatly from its international staff and we will continue to support and attract talented overseas staff who are willing to dedicate their time, energy and skills to healthcare. Discrimination against patients and staff undermines everything our healthcare stands for and the NHS has zero tolerance for racism.”
