The NHS is struggling to recruit doctors domestically in Leeds as the proportion of staff recruited from the UK has dropped by 15% since 2015.
According to data collected by the BBC from NHS Digital, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust have seen a 15.2% drop in recruitment of staff from the UK as a proportion between 2015 and 2021. At the same time there has been a 15% increase in staff coming from the rest of the world, except for the UK and the EU.
Meanwhile the number of staff recruited from the EU has stayed relatively stable, with only a 0.2% increase since 2015. This means the NHS in Leeds is increasingly looking towards hiring staff from abroad.
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A spokesperson for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT), said: “The NHS has always benefited from nurses and doctors coming from other countries to live and work here in the UK. International recruitment continues to feature as an important part of our workforce supply strategy, in line with the NHS People Plan.
“Over recent years we have benefited from attracting more overseas medical, nursing, scientist, and allied health professional talent to Leeds through our ethical and sustainable recruitment programme.
“At the same time, we have put a significant focus on our homegrown talent, including an apprenticeship pathway from apprentice care support worker to registered nurse that performs a vital role in closing our workforce gaps. Increasing the substantive clinical workforce to support the provision of excellent patient services is our long-term priority, and we continue to grow our workforce to meet the current challenges that the NHS faces.
“We are proud that our workforce is extremely diverse – just like our patients.”
The deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) international committee, Dr Amit Kochhar, has called this a “workforce crisis”. He said: "The staff working in the NHS are its greatest asset and whether they trained in the UK or further afield, they all make invaluable contributions to patient care.
“The NHS is facing a workforce crisis and since well before the pandemic has struggled to recruit and retain staff. As of December 2021, more than 110,000 posts in secondary care are vacant, almost 8,200 of which are medical posts.
"High vacancies create a vicious cycle: shortages produce environments of chronic stress, which increases pressure on existing staff, and in turn encourages higher turnover and absence.”
However, the Department for Health and Social Care said there were currently a record number of doctors in work with 32,600, or 34.2% more doctors in January 2022 than in January 2010. They also said they had provided funding for 1,500 more undergraduate medical school places in England, an increase of 25% in three years.
Across the UK, only 58% of doctors recruited in 2021 came from the UK, a drop from 69% in 2015 while the number coming from the rest of the world rose from 18% to 34%.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has also reported 25,000 nurses leaving the profession in the last year alone saying poor working conditions were one of the reasons. Kate Shoesmith, Deputy CEO of the Recruitment and Employment Federation also pointed towards working conditions.
She said: “Staff shortages in the NHS and the wider healthcare sector are the worst they have ever been. However, the shortages were severe even before the pandemic and the fact is that recruitment and retention in healthcare have not been good enough for a long time.
"Between 2015 and 2021, recruitment businesses in the sector consistently highlighted shortages of care workers, nurses and healthcare assistants, as well as support workers and other roles.
“There are lots of reasons for the shortages but healthcare recruitment agencies frequently cite burnout and poor working conditions as the main reason staff leave the NHS, and a desire to work flexibly as a reason why some people take agency shifts instead.”
The chief executive of NHS Employers, Danny Mortimer, praised the work of international staff but said the NHS is facing “chronic workforce shortages” which are “getting worse”. He said these needed to be solved and the government needed to commit to a “fully funded long term workforce plan”.
In response, the DHSC said: “Following on from expansion over the last decade, growth of the NHS workforce continues to be a priority for this government, as demonstrated by the manifesto commitments to deliver 50,000 more nurses. As of January 2022, there were 29,100 more nurses than in September 2019. The government is over halfway towards achieving this manifesto commitment, helping put the NHS on a sustainable long-term supply of nursing staff.
“NHS England has invested in several schemes to expand the general practice workforce by retaining and recruiting doctors and we are on track to deliver over 26,000 more primary care professionals.”
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