Training refugee and asylum seeking healthcare professionals: an ethical approach to UK workforce challenges

Wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere have resulted in large scale international displacement of doctors, nurses, and allied healthcare professionals.1 Those receiving status as refugees or making an asylum claim are often accommodated in government arranged living spaces across Europe, relying on financial support from the state,2 and becoming increasingly deskilled.3 The negative narrative around migration crisis in European discourse has led to the increasing demonisation of refugees and asylum seekers, influencing governmental policies, including those incompatible with human rights such as the scrapped plan to deport asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda for processing, asylum, and resettlement.4

Concurrently, the healthcare systems of European host countries are challenged by workforce shortages and increasing healthcare demands of ageing populations. These health systems are in crisis, as evidenced by reduced access to patient centred healthcare, longer waiting times, delayed diagnoses, and poorer health outcomes.567 Over the past 20 years, European health systems have become increasingly reliant on international medical graduates from low to middle income countries,8 which also face healthcare shortages.9 The World Health Organization (WHO) has forecast worsening health professional shortages globally, up to 12.9 million by 2035.10 Training refugee and asylum seeking healthcare professionals to work in host health systems could provide a rapid, cost effective, ethical alternative to recruiting international medical graduates, which we are involved in, while also allowing individuals to retain their professional identity. Provision of recurrently funded, tailored requalification pathways for refugee and asylum seeking health professionals would be mutually beneficial, alleviating chronic workforce shortages while allowing displaced people to retain their medical skills. The experience of REACHE, the UK’s largest …