More non-UK graduates than home grown clinicians joined medical register in past year

For the first time, last year the number of doctors joining the medical register who graduated outside the UK exceeded those who trained in the country, the General Medical Council has reported.1

Reliance on overseas clinicians to provide healthcare in the UK was made clear in a workforce report published by the regulator on 24 October that showed the workforce to be increasingly international, while UK medical graduates were more ethnically diverse than ever before.

The report also showed a sharper rise in the number of doctors on GP training programmes in the last year than in the previous six years.

Specifically focusing on workforce issues, the report was based on the GMC’s own midyear 2012 to 2019 workforce data from the UK medical registers. It also includes responses from 3876 doctors who completed an accompanying survey.

It shows that the number of doctors licensed …