In August 2022, we reported how the share of homegrown doctors and nurses joining England's NHS had reached its lowest point in seven years.
Some 58% of doctors joining the health service in 2021 came from the UK, with health bosses increasingly turning to international recruitment. The British Medical Association said the NHS faced a "workforce crisis".
The government, however, insisted there were record numbers of doctors, a rise of 34% since 2010.
While overall numbers had been increasing, critics said declining domestic recruitment was unsustainable to keep pace with demand.
Methodology
We analysed workforce data provided by NHS Digital showing the nationalities of joiners, leavers and staff in post in England鈥檚 NHS from 2015 to 2021, to investigate if trends we reported following the Brexit referendum in June 2016 continued.
We also submitted 27 FOI requests to every health board in Scotland and Wales and every health and social care trust in Northern Ireland for similar data and manually inputted those data into a mastersheet. These data cover the period 2015-2020.
What we found
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We found the share of UK doctors joining the health service had fallen from 69% in 2015 to 58% last year. Over the same period, the share of new UK nurses fell from 74% to 61%.
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Recruitment of doctors from the Rest of the World rose from 18% to 34% over the same period, and that share of international nurses rose from 7% to 34%.
Get the data
We produced and with details of staff leaving and joining each NHS trust in England as well as partial data received from the FOI requests sent within Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We also produced allowing our regional news partners to easily access information for their local trust.
Interviews and quotes
- Patricia Marquis (she/her), Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Director for England
- Danny Mortimer (he/him), chief executive of NHS Employers (part of the NHS Confederation)
- Consultant radiologist Sumaira Babar (she/her), who moved from Karachi in Pakistan to Huddersfield with her young family in October 2021.
- Dr Amit Kochhar (he/him), British Medical Association (BMA) international committee deputy chair
- Dr Hajra Usmani (she/her), who left her post as an A&E consultant in Frimley, Surrey, in 2021, to work in a similar role in Medina, Saudi Arabia
- Dr Alexia Tsigka (she/her), a Consultant Histopathologist at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals and part-time Deputy Clinical Lead at Cyted in Cambridge. Born in Greece, she was a dual national with a British passport after applying in 2019.
- The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)
- Kate Shoesmith (she/her), Deputy CEO at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)
- Dr Kamal Sidhu (he/him), a GP partner working across two practices in County Durham, who moved to England from India but was considering whether he needed to "uproot" his family abroad to care for his father after a heart attack left him housebound
Partner usage
The Shared Data Unit makes data journalism available to the wider news industry as part of the 大象传媒 Local News Partnership. Stories written by partners based on this research included:
- Birmingham Live: 13 August 2022
- Birmingham Mail: Hospitals face crisis in mass exodus of staff 20 August 2022
- Bracknell News: 5 August 2022
- Birmingham Post: NHS workforce crisis as bosses hunt for staff outside Europe 25 August 2022
- Bristol Live: 22 August 2022
- Bucks Free Press: 5 August 2022
- Coventry Live: 20 August 2022
- Coventry Telegraph: NHS 'workforce crisis' as more doctors and nurses quit their jobs 23 August 2022
- Eastern Eye: UK's increasing dependence on overseas hirings to meet healthcare needs raises concern 5 August 2022
- Eastern Eye: NHS 'needs plan' to reduce reliance on overseas medics 12 August 2022
- Evening Standard: 5 August 2022
- Express & Star (Black Country): 5 August 2022
- Hackney Gazette: 9 August 2022
- Hamsptead and Highgate Express: 5 August 2022
- Hull Daily Mail: 10 August 2022
- Islington Gazette: 9 August 2022
- Leeds Live: 8 August 2022
- The Lincolnite: 5 August 2022
- Liverpool Echo: 16 August 2022
- Manchester World: 10 August 2022
- Norfolk Live: 5 August 2022
- Nottinghamshire Live: 15 August 2022
- Oxfordshire Live: 19 August 2022
- Peterborough Telegraph: 5 August 2022
- The Reading Chronicle: Share of homegrown doctors and nurses at Royal Berkshire Hospital decreasing 9 August 2022
- The Sentinel (Stoke): Our NHS faces 'staffing crisis' 11 August 2022
- St Albans Review: 5 August 2022
- Suffolk News: 5 August 2022
- Teesside Live: 17 August 2022
- Wales Online: 5 August 2022
The story featured online and as a bulletin piece across 大象传媒 local and national television and radio through 5 August 2022.
Health correspondent Jim Reed produced television packages for the 1pm TV news and the News Channel while 大象传媒 News's health editor Hugh Pym reported the story as the lead on the 10pm TV news. Shared Data Unit journalist Paul Lynch appeared on 大象传媒 Radio 4's Today programme and 5 Live Breakfast to discuss the story and also carried out interviews on 大象传媒 Radio Tees, 大象传媒 Radio Cambridgeshire, 大象传媒 Radio Newcastle, 大象传媒 Radio Kent and 大象传媒 CWR.
The report made headlines for 大象传媒 Radio 2, Newsbeat (Radio 1, 1Xtra and Asian Network), Look North (Yorkshire), 大象传媒 Radio London, 大象传媒 Radio Sheffield, 大象传媒 Radio Bristol, 大象传媒 Three Counties Radio, 大象传媒 Radio WM, 大象传媒 Radio Lancashire, 大象传媒 Radio Solent, 大象传媒 Radio Berkshire, 大象传媒 Radio Leeds, 大象传媒 Sussex, 大象传媒 Radio Cambridgeshire, 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside, 大象传媒 CWR, 大象传媒 Tees, 大象传媒 Radio Derby, 大象传媒 Radio Devon, 大象传媒 Radio Humberside, 大象传媒 Essex, 大象传媒 Newcastle, 大象传媒 Radio Gloucestershire, 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester, 大象传媒 Radio Kent, 大象传媒 Radio Leicester, 大象传媒 Radio Lincolnshire, 大象传媒 Radio York, 大象传媒 Radio Northampton, 大象传媒 Radio Nottingham, 大象传媒 Radio Oxford, 大象传媒 Radio Shropshire, 大象传媒 Somerset, 大象传媒 Radio Suffolk, 大象传媒 Surrey, 大象传媒 Wiltshire, 大象传媒 Radio Guernsey, 大象传媒 Radio Jersey and 大象传媒 Radio Foyle.
Other usage
- British Medical Association: 5 August 2022
- Careappointments.com: 5 August 2022
- Chadwick Lawrence: 16 August 2022
- Chamber UK: 5 August 2022
- gg2.net: UK's increasing dependence on overseas hirings to meet healthcare needs raises concern 6 August 2022
- The Guardian: 19 August 2022
- Health Business magazine: 5 August 2022
- The Independent: 19 August 2022
- iNews: 11 September 2022
- MailOnline: 5 August 2022
- MailOnline: 23 August 2022
- The Mirror: 19 August 2022
- Nursing in Practice: 8 August 2022
- Practice Business: 10 August 2022
- patient safety learning the hub: 5 August 2022
- SriLanka Weekly: UK鈥檚 increasing dependence on overseas hirings to meet healthcare needs raises concern 6 August 2022
- The Telegraph: 5 August 2022
- The Times: 6 August 2022