Medicine: British Students Abroad
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of British nationals who obtained medical degrees overseas and subsequently applied for roles within the NHS in each of the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The following table shows the number of United Kingdom nationals with a non-UK primary medical qualification (PMQ) applying to the UK Foundation Programme between 2021 and 2025:
Foundation training intake year | UK nationals with a non-UK PMQ |
2021 | 152 |
2022 | 175 |
2023 | 160 |
2024 | 140 |
2025 | 156 |
Source: NHS England foundation programme recruitment data.
The data is based on self-declared nationality. It is possible that some of these doctors gained UK nationality following their medical graduation, although the data does not allow identification of this.
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