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.
We analysed workforce data provided by NHS Digital showing the nationalities of joiners, leavers and staff in post in England’s 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.
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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%.
We produced this story pack and this dataset 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 this website allowing our regional news partners to easily access information for their local trust.
- 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
The Shared Data Unit makes data journalism available to the wider news industry as part of the BBC Local News Partnership. Stories written by partners based on this research included:
- Birmingham Live: NHS facing 'workforce crisis' as service struggles to recruit local doctors and nurses 13 August 2022
- Birmingham Mail: Hospitals face crisis in mass exodus of staff 20 August 2022
- Bracknell News: Berkshire's NHS staff joining from UK falls since Brexit 5 August 2022
- Birmingham Post: NHS workforce crisis as bosses hunt for staff outside Europe 25 August 2022
- Bristol Live: Bristol NHS struggles to attract UK-trained doctors amid ‘workforce emergency’ 22 August 2022
- Bucks Free Press: NHS workforce levels show UK staff decreasing 5 August 2022
- Coventry Live: NHS worker shortage 'crisis' as doctors and nurses quit jobs 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: NHS in England ‘heavily reliant’ on doctors overseas amid staffing ‘crisis’ 5 August 2022
- Express & Star (Black Country): NHS staffing concerns grow amid increase in share of recruits from abroad 5 August 2022
- Hackney Gazette: Hospital trust bucks national trend by recruiting more UK medical staff 9 August 2022
- Hamsptead and Highgate Express: Hospital trusts increasingly reliant on international medical staff 5 August 2022
- Hull Daily Mail: NHS increasingly reliant on overseas doctors and nurses amid "workforce crisis" 10 August 2022
- Islington Gazette: Hospital trust increasingly reliant on international medical staff 9 August 2022
- Leeds Live: Leeds NHS suffering from 'workforce crisis' as service struggles to fill jobs 8 August 2022
- The Lincolnite: More doctors training in Lincolnshire after drop in local staff 5 August 2022
- Liverpool Echo: NHS staff shortages are 'worst they have ever been' as doctors leave 16 August 2022
- Manchester World: NHS recruitment Manchester: Fewer UK staff joining workforce in Greater Manchester hospital trusts 10 August 2022
- Norfolk Live: Increase in NHS doctors and nurses joining from outside the EU as hospitals face 'workforce crisis' 5 August 2022
- Nottinghamshire Live: Solution 'long overdue' as 3,300 staff quit NHS jobs in Nottinghamshire 15 August 2022
- Oxfordshire Live: NHS facing 'workforce crisis' in Oxfordshire amid struggle to recruit 19 August 2022
- Peterborough Telegraph: Falling number of 'homegrown' doctors and nurses opt to work for Peterborough health services, warns new report 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: NHS staffing concerns grow amid increase in share of recruits from abroad 5 August 2022
- Suffolk News: Suffolk NHS trusts see international recruitment soar as UK intake stalls 5 August 2022
- Teesside Live: Share of homegrown NHS doctors and nurses hits seven-year low in 'workforce crisis' 17 August 2022
- Wales Online: NHS increasingly reliant on overseas doctors and nurses amid "workforce crisis" 5 August 2022
The story featured online and as a bulletin piece across BBC 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 BBC 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 BBC Radio 4's Today programme and 5 Live Breakfast to discuss the story and also carried out interviews on BBC Radio Tees, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, BBC Radio Newcastle, BBC Radio Kent and BBC CWR.
The report made headlines for BBC Radio 2, Newsbeat (Radio 1, 1Xtra and Asian Network), Look North (Yorkshire), BBC Radio London, BBC Radio Sheffield, BBC Radio Bristol, BBC Three Counties Radio, BBC Radio WM, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio Solent, BBC Radio Berkshire, BBC Radio Leeds, BBC Sussex, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, BBC Radio Merseyside, BBC CWR, BBC Tees, BBC Radio Derby, BBC Radio Devon, BBC Radio Humberside, BBC Essex, BBC Newcastle, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Hereford and Worcester, BBC Radio Kent, BBC Radio Leicester, BBC Radio Lincolnshire, BBC Radio York, BBC Radio Northampton, BBC Radio Nottingham, BBC Radio Oxford, BBC Radio Shropshire, BBC Somerset, BBC Radio Suffolk, BBC Surrey, BBC Wiltshire, BBC Radio Guernsey, BBC Radio Jersey and BBC Radio Foyle.
- British Medical Association: Dependence on international doctors highlights workforce emergency in the NHS, says BMA 5 August 2022
- Careappointments.com: Fresh calls to tackle NHS staffing crisis as new analysis suggests over-reliance on recruits from abroad 5 August 2022
- Chadwick Lawrence: INCREASE IN NHS RECRUITS FROM OVERSEAS PROMPTS OVER-RELIANCE CONCERN 16 August 2022
- Chamber UK: Is NHS reliance on overseas recruitment healthy? 5 August 2022
- gg2.net: UK's increasing dependence on overseas hirings to meet healthcare needs raises concern 6 August 2022
- The Guardian: Overseas hiring spree planned for care homes in England amid winter fears 19 August 2022
- Health Business magazine: Concern about over-reliance on overseas NHS staff 5 August 2022
- The Independent: Government considers overseas hiring spree for care homes 19 August 2022
- iNews: Luring doctors from poorer nations is UK’s quiet scandal 11 September 2022
- MailOnline: The INTER-National Health Service: Share of NHS medics hired from overseas DOUBLES in five years — with one in three new recruits now from abroad 5 August 2022
- MailOnline: NHS strikes deal to poach foreign nurses from Nepal in bid to plug staffing gaps - despite being on a global red list for recruitment because of its own health worker shortages 23 August 2022
- The Mirror: Care home staff shortages could see more foreign workers recruited in new plans 19 August 2022
- Nursing in Practice: NHS increasingly dependant on international recruitment, data shows 8 August 2022
- Practice Business: Is the NHS over-reliant on international recruits? 10 August 2022
- patient safety learning the hub: NHS too reliant on overseas recruits, says union 5 August 2022
- SriLanka Weekly: UK’s increasing dependence on overseas hirings to meet healthcare needs raises concern 6 August 2022
- The Telegraph: Surge in foreign medics ‘a risk to the NHS’ 5 August 2022
- The Times: Staffing crisis leaves NHS increasingly reliant on doctors from overseas 6 August 2022