British GPs offered £18,000 to come home from Australia

NHS England has launched a major international recruitment drive in a bid to boost GP numbers.

British doctors working in Australia are being offered £18,500 to return home, while Aussie medics will receive the same amount if they agree to come and work in England.

Today’s GP vacancy rates are the highest on record, with more than 1,000 GPs having left the NHS since 2015 due to increased demands and heavy workloads.

Dominic Hardy, NHS England’s Director of Primary Care Delivery, said: “We are pulling out all the stops to solve the shortage of GPs that’s why we are commissioning two specialist UK recruitment agencies to target Aussie doctors and stretch our search for top talent from Europe to the other side of the world.

“Our message is that we want to encourage doctors to think about practising as a GP in England and we will support them all the way.”

The new initiative, which was unveiled at the Royal College of GPs’ (RCGP) annual conference in Glasgow yesterday, will see red tape slashed for Australian GPs, meaning a typical one-year application will be cut to just three months.

The RCGP’s chair, Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, said: “Australia is the first country we have evaluated because we know their training and experience is similar to that of the UK and there are doctors wanting to come to the UK but it has always been an arduous process for them.

“The streamlined system is intended to cut out a huge amount of bureaucracy, and bring these doctors into placements and work much quicker than before.”

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This scheme follows the London Ambulance Service’s successful recruitment drive, which has seen more than 500 paramedics make the move from Australia and New Zealand since 2014. Paramedics from Down Under now make up more than 10 per cent of the service’s total workforce.

It is hoped that 2,000 foreign doctors will be at work in England by 2020/21 as a result of the new initiative.

Dominic added: “It’s no secret the NHS needs to recruit more GPs, so it makes sense to head to Australia where doctors’ skills, training and high levels of care closely match those of their British counterparts.

“The recruitment programme is gathering momentum with interest from GPs in Europe and we also have more home-grown GPs in training than ever before.”