The UK is experiencing a shortage of doctors… and it's Brexit's fault.
This is the result of a study commissioned by The Guardian and published this Sunday by the Nuffield Trust, a think tank specializing in health.
According to this report, Brexit would have indeed led to a shortage of around 4,000 doctors from the European Union in four major specialties.
The study comes as Britain's public health system (NHS) is struggling after years of austerity, with record high hospital waiting lists due to Covid-19 and shortages of doctors and health workers. nurses.
Difficulties aggravated by leaving the EU
The Nuffield Trust looked at four specialties (anaesthesia, paediatrics, cardio-thoracic surgery and psychiatry) in which European doctors were particularly represented before Brexit.
These four specialties were already experiencing tensions in their recruitment before the United Kingdom's exit from the EU.
But since Brexit, the increase in foreign enrollment has slowed considerably, according to the study.
If the trend observed before had continued, there should have been more than 41,000 doctors from the EU and Europe in 2021, i.e. at least 4,000 more than the figures actually observed over the period.
For the Nuffield Trust, “the campaign and the result of the referendum [2016] is the obvious reason for this change in trend”.
The uncertainty about the new rules for the movement of people, the tightening of the rules for granting visas and the deterioration of working conditions in the health sector have played a role.
The study concludes that “the stagnation in the number of doctors from the EU in these specialties has exacerbated existing shortages in areas where the NHS is unable to find skilled labor elsewhere”.
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