Does NHS now mean ‘Non-British Health Service’?

weekend blog

What percentage of NHS staff do you think aren’t British?

• 10%
• 20%
• 30%

What percentage of NHS nurses do you think aren’t British?

• 10%
• 20%
• 30%

What percentage of NHS doctors do you think aren’t British?

• 10%
• 20%
• 30%

Well, here are the figures. They come from the BBC in-house journal, the Guardian supposed ‘newspaper, so they must be accurate.

• For NHS staff in general, 20.4% were non-British.
• For Nurses, 30% are non-British nationals.
• For doctors, the figure is even more shocking – more than a third of doctors (36.3%) are non-UK nationals.

The head honcho at NHS Employers tells us: “Teams across the NHS are hugely appreciative to their overseas colleagues for their support and contribution.” But he perhaps forgets the huge number of non-British nurses who get into trouble with the NMC (Nursing and MIdwifery Council) and doctors who get into trouble with the GMC (General Medical Council) for incompetence, uselessness, corruption, sexual offences and other problems.

Recently we had Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman, an NHS locum surgeon from Egypt, who carried out a flawed emergency bowel procedure on a young man. It meant the contents of the patient’s bowel, leaving his stomach, were re-deposited back into his stomach through a circular “closed loop”, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) heard. The UK-trained surgeon who investigated this incompetence said this was: “as bad as it gets”. Interestingly, the BBC report referred to Egyptian-born and Egypt-trained Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman as an “Oldham doctor“. Last time I looked, Oldham was not in Egypt. This looks to me to be just another blatant example of the usual BBC gaslighting trying to de-emphasis that the bungling excuse for a doctor was from a useless, corrupt, Third-world country.

Moreover, an independent review published by Great Ormond Street Hospital revealed that consultant orthopaedic surgeon Yaser Jabbar (not a typical British name – yet) harmed 94 children through substandard and botched surgeries between 2017 and 2022. Yaser Jabbar no longer holds a license to practice medicine in the UK and has reportedly relocated to Dubai.

Where do all these wonderful NHS employees come from?

• Of the 1,282,623 full-time equivalent (FTE) hospital and community health service staff in England in September 2023 whose nationality was known, 20.4% were non-UK nationals. This was up from 13% in September 2016 and 11.9% in September 2009, when the data series began
• The most common nurse and health visitor non-UK nationality is Indian, accounting for 10.1% (37,097) of all FTEs, followed by Filipino 7.7% (28,282), Nigerian 2.5% (9,182) and Irish (1.1%).
• Indian was also the most common non-UK nationality among doctors, accounting for 8% (17,280) of all medics, followed by Pakistani 3.7% (7,992), Egyptian 2.9% (6,264) and Nigerian 2.0% (4,320).

It has long been known (but covered up by ‘our’ NHS?) that the tests foreign nurses must take before being allowed to work in the UK have been plagued by widespread cheating and corruption. It seems that NIgerian nurses have been some of the worst culprits. Though this is hardly surprising knowing what a corrupt hell-hole Nigeria is.

As for doctors, I haven’t been able to find any estimates on how many have bought or bribed or (for female doctors – f*cked?) their way to qualification. But I do know that after a particularly horrendous PIA (Pakistan International Airlines) crash, a Pakistani government investigation found that around a third of PIA pilots weren’t qualified to fly planes as they had obtained their pilots licences through corruption and cheating. There’s no reason to believe that a similar situation doesn’t exist in the Pakistani medical schools.

According to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, India, where most of the NHS’s foreign doctors come from, is slightly less corrupt than Pakistan. So hopefully a greater percentage of Indian doctors working in ‘our’ NHS are actually qualified.

Meanwhile, it sems that thousands of UK-trained and thus probably competent British doctors have emigrated to places like Australia, New Zealand and Canada An estimated 18,000 UK-trained doctors are currently practicing overseas, which is about one in seven of the total.

Still, diversity is our strength. So, no doubt having so many (sometimes unqualified) nurses and doctors (from some of the world’s most corrupt countries) in our NHS has made our NHS better?