news Brexit has worsened shortage of NHS doctors, analysis shows | NHS

Brexit has worsened the UK's acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals.The

disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures

show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians.Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016

had been maintained since then, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank which it has shared with the Guardian.In 2021, a total of 37,035 medics from the EU and

European free trade area (EFTA) were working in the UK. However, there would have been 41,320 – or 4,285 more – if the decision to leave the EU had not triggered a

“slowdown” in medical recruitment from the EU and the EFTA quartet of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein.Doctors from EU/European free trade area working in UK -

graphThe dropoff has left four major types of medical specialties that have longstanding doctor shortages – anaesthetics, children, psychiatry, and heart and lung treatment –

​​failing to keep up with a demand for care heightened by Covid and an aging population.Just one example of how the slowdown is affecting day-to-day NHS care is the limit on

the amount of surgery that can take place, said the Nuffield Trust researcher Martha McCarey, the lead author of the analysis. The UK has 394 fewer EU/EFTA anaesthetists than if

pre-Brexit numbers had continued, she found.“The NHS has struggled to recruit vital specialists such as anaesthetists at home, and Brexit looks to be worsening longstanding

workforce shortages in some professional groups. Without anaesthetists, many operations cannot happen,” she said.The findings come amid calls from business leaders for ministers

to rethink how immigration into Britain works to help overcome economy-wide labor shortages. These have deepened in recent years, partly as a result of the UK ending automatic free

movement for EU nationals. The Confederation of British Industry has been particularly vocal in that demand.The Nuffield Trust blamed the dropoff in doctors on the fact that

EU-trained medics seeking to work in the UK now face extra bureaucracy and higher costs as a direct result of Brexit. “Since the referendum campaign, greater costs, more

paperwork and uncertainty over visas because of Brexit have been among the biggest barriers to recruiting and keeping EU and EFTA doctors,” said McCarey.The NHS has 369 fewer