EU doctors offered £90k to work in the UK despite government plans to make NHS less reliant on foreign doctors
Health bosses hope to recruit up to 500 doctors from overseas to solve the recruitment crisis
THE NHS is offering GPs from the EU a guaranteed annual salary of £90,000 and a “generous relocation package” to move to England to work.
Health bosses hope to recruit up to 500 family doctors under the scheme, in a bid to solve a recruitment crisis.
Successful applicants will be given 12 weeks of paid training at a campus in Poland, including a crash course in English language, culture, and the NHS.
They will also be given help with registering with the doctors’ regulator – the General Medical Council – and further support to get their English up to scratch.
Recruits will be paid a starting salary of £70,000 a year, increasing to £90,000 once they are bedded in and working independently.
Each has been promised three years of on-going training and annual pay rises to encourage them to stay, GP magazine Pulse reports.
The government has vowed to recruit 5,000 more GPs by 2020, including 500 from overseas.
But Brexit has cast some doubt over NHS England’s plans with recruiters warning the referendum result could put off potential applicants.
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The incentive scheme was set up last year to get ahead of any changes in legislation on employing EU workers that might arise once the UK leaves the EU.
The Lincolnshire Local Medical Committee – which represents GPs and their practices – said 13 doctors have been appointed so far.
They come from Poland, Croatia, Lithuania, Greece and Spain.
The first round of recruits will start training next week, with a view to starting work in England from April. The next wave is due to start training eight to 12 weeks later.
Dr Kieran Sharrock, medical director at Lincolnshire LMC, said the scheme has been “really successful” and there will be more interviews in the “next few weeks”.
The initiative was started in Lincolnshire because the area has one of the biggest shortfalls of GPs anywhere in England.
The model will now be used as a blueprint and rolled out across the country.
The training will be paid for by the LMC, practices, clinical commission groups, NHS England and Health Education England.
Dr Sharrock said practices had agreed the salary structure for the scheme “based upon local average salaried GP salary”.
And he added: “The salary increases annually to encourage the GPs to stay in the scheme.”
NHS England said GPs will only be recruited “on an ethical basis”, from countries where there are already plenty of GPs.
The overseas recruitment drive is at odds with the Government’s plan for the NHS to become less reliant on foreign doctors and in the long-term “self-sufficient” in producing medical staff.