Data in the regulator’s The state of medical education and practice in the UK: workforce report 2025 show that notably greater numbers of non-UK qualified doctors left practice last year. 4,880 doctors, who obtained their primary medical qualification outside of the UK and who had been working in the UK, left in 2024 – a 26% increase on the previous year’s 3,869. It is the first significant year-on-year rise since the pandemic, with 3,968 non-UK qualified doctors leaving in 2022 and 3,824 in 2021. Doctors who qualified outside of the UK currently make up around 42% of the workforce. Last year also saw a levelling off in the number of international medics joining. 20,060 non-UK qualified doctors joined, only slightly up on the 19,629 in 2023, and a much smaller increase than in previous years going back to the pandemic in 2020. And those who did join were less likely to secure employment. Of those who took UK registration after passing the GMC’s exam for international joiners last year, only around one in eight connected to a designated body – an indicator they are working as a doctor – within six months. That figure was one in five in 2023, and one in four in 2021 and 2022. The UK government’s ten-year health plan for England, published earlier this year, committed to prioritising UK medical graduates for postgraduate training places. GMC Chief Executive Charlie Massey says that building a more sustainable system, that meets the needs of the workforce as well as patients, is welcome, but that the wider impact on a current workforce that is heavily reliant on doctors from all over the world must be considered. This problem would be compounded in general practice, central to the UK government’s vision for neighbourhood health services, where half of first-year trainees in 2024 qualified outside of the UK.
UK Fitness to Practise News

Charlie Massey, Chief Executive of the GMC, said:

‘Doctors represent a mobile workforce, whose skills are in high demand around the world. Internationally qualified doctors who have historically chosen to work in the UK could quite conceivably choose to leave if they feel they have no future job progression here, or if the country feels less welcoming. Any hardening of rhetoric and falling away of support could undermine the UK’s image as somewhere the brightest and the best from all over the world want to work.

‘It is vital that workforce policies do not inadvertently demoralise or drive out the talent on which our health services depend. Doctors who qualified outside of the UK make up 42% of those working in the UK. 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.’

‘Whatever the future makeup of the workforce, we all – from employers to regulators, policymakers to the profession itself – have a duty to recognise the essential contribution all doctors make, irrespective of background, and to ensure that each one is supported and valued accordingly.

‘That’s crucial for the professionals providing care but, also, most importantly, for the patients receiving it.’

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