NHS services are in desperate need of specialists yet British doctors working abroad are unable to rejoin because of a ‘bizarre’ red tape rule.
Despite almost identical training the UK will not recognise specialist medical qualifications from Australia and New Zealand.
As a result, hundreds of British doctors are now stranded in the southern hemisphere, unable to bring their expertise back home.
This ‘bureaucratic barrier’ has led to a one-way brain drain because the same rule does not apply for British doctors looking to move half way around the world.
Dozens of doctors have now signed an open letter to the health secretary, Wes Streeting.
The letter urges him to legislate so that the General Medical Council automatically recognises Australian and New Zealand specialist qualifications in areas such as paediatrics, oncology, pathology and surgery.
Franki and Matt Hart, who left their NHS junior doctor jobs to move to New Zealand are among those who signed the letter.
The couple, who met while studying medicine at Oxford University, are both consultants in Sydney, where they specialise in the treatment of seriously ill children.
Franki and Matt Hart, who left their NHS junior doctor jobs to move to New Zealand are desperate to return home
The couple, who met while studying medicine at Oxford University , are both consultants in Sydney , where they specialise in the treatment of seriously ill children
They are desperate to return home but feel they are stranded in New Zealand.
‘The UK is where my heart is. It’s where my family are, and I still love the NHS,’ Franki Hart, 39, told The Times. ‘I’d love to come back and do some work there. But it’s just not feasible, because we can’t get our qualifications recognised.’
In order to be considered eligible for an NHS hospital consultant post, they must join the UK specialist register, which typically takes two to four years.
It involves submitting 1,000 pages of evidence and logging every procedure they performed abroad to prove it was equivalent to practising in the UK.
The process can cost around £100,000 in fees and lost earnings and in some cases doctors have been forced to fly back to Australia to source the correct paperwork.
Matt Hart added: ‘It’s very hard to claim that the standard of medical training in Australia and New Zealand is inferior to the training in the UK. There is a shared culture, a shared language, a shared way of practising medicine.’
One of the most confusing parts of the problem is that the UK automatically accepts the medical qualifications of doctors from European countries.
Due to more than half of NHS specialist vacancies remaining unfilled, the health service has resorted to importing doctors from countries like India, Pakistan and Nigeria.
David Abelson, a respiratory consultant, who organised the open letter, said it was a ‘bizarre double standard’.
He said: ‘Britain specifically recognises European qualifications — including countries with very different healthcare systems such as Romania and Bulgaria — but doesn’t recognise Australian qualifications.’
