International medical graduates in the National Health Service

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has benefited from the skills of foreign qualified doctors for many years. International medical graduates (IMGs) – that is, those doctors with primary medical qualifications outside the European Economic Area (EEA) – have come to the UK despite the significant personal and financial costs, alongside the burden of taking the Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board (PLAB) examination. Despite the costs and increasing indications that the UK job market was becoming saturated with the increased indigenous medical school output and expansion of the EEA, doctors still migrate to the UK in their thousands (McGinn, 2005). The government’s active international recruitment policy, which continued until very recently despite the significant increase in places in UK medical schools, was partially responsible for this trend. Until last year, once registered to practise in the UK, access to specialty training was facilitated by the permit-free training visa (PFTV) system, which allowed IMGs to work and train simultaneously, without the need for a work permit. This meant that they could compete on an equal footing with UK graduates for training opportunities in the UK. The implementation and potential impact of some of the recent policy changes in the NHS specifically with regard to IMGs is discussed here briefly.