OECD Health Working Papers
This series is designed to make available to a wider readership health studies prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.
- ISSN: 18152015 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/18152015
Migration of Health Workers
The UK Perspective to 2006
The UK has a population of 56 million, and most healthcare is delivered through the National Health
Service (NHS). The NHS employs more than one million staff.
In the late 1990s shortages of skilled staff were a main obstacle to improving services in the NHS.
The response by government was to “grow” the NHS workforce. There are four main policy options to
“grow” the workforce- increase home based training; improve retention rates of current staff (to reduce
need to recruit additional staff); improve “return” of staff currently not practising; and internationally
recruit health professionals.
International recruitment was used to achieve rapid growth in the NHS workforce. It was facilitated
by fast tracking work permits for health professionals, by targeting recruits in specified countries, using
specialist recruitment agencies, and by co-ordinating local level recruitment within the NHS (...)
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