Doctors and nurses from foreign countries are shunning the NHS due to a “hostile environment” created by anti-migrant rhetoric, according to the leader of the UK’s medics.
The growing perception of the UK as being “unwelcoming” and “racist” due to the government’s immigration approach is creating a risk for the health service, according to Jeanette Dickson, chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.
Ms Dickson, who leads the body representing the UK and Ireland’s 220,000 doctors, including GPs, surgeons and anaesthetists, told The Guardian: “My feeling is we are creating a where the rhetoric is ‘foreigner bad’.
“If you have never visited Britain and are looking at our media, the social media, press media, print media, what our politicians are reported as saying, I think that it’s not unreasonable to see that as a hostile environment.”
She warned that the NHS “could quite easily fall over” and be left without “a critical mass of people there to run the service safely”.
“Because [foreign health staff] see Britain retreating from Europe, ‘we can go it alone’,” she continued.
“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.”
She asked: “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. The prevalence of it [hostility to migrants] is significantly more [than] ten years ago.”
A 2025 workforce report by the UK’s General Medical Council found that 42 per cent of UK doctors qualified abroad.
The report said: “If we see even a small percentage increase in them leaving, our health services will end up with huge holes that they’ll struggle to fill.”
However, data from the GMC released last month revealed a 26 per cent increase in overseas-trained doctors leaving the NHS in record numbers.
However, recent reports also suggest that staff are facing increasing “1970s, 1980s-style” racist abuse in healthcare settings, according to health secretary Wes Streeting’s statements last month.
“Even if you’ve got a long wait, which I know is frustrating, or you feel like you’ve been sent from pillar to post, which sadly does happen, there’s no excuse for taking that out on staff,” he told The Guardian.
Mr Streeting added: “But the thing that has shocked me most of all is that the rising tide of racism and the way in which kind of 1970s, 1980s-style racism has apparently become permissible again in this country. I’m really shocked at the way this is now impacting on NHS staff.”
A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The NHS benefits hugely from its international staff, and we’ll continue to support and attract talented overseas staff who want to dedicate their time, energy and skills to the health service. Discrimination against patients and staff alike undermines everything our health service stands for – and the NHS has a zero tolerance for racism.”