Recruiting doctors from poor countries: the great brain robbery?

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Opportunities or opportunism? Overseas recruitment schemes are marketed primarily as an opportunity for doctors to experience one of the world's best healthcare systems. Yet it is obvious that the NHS is trying to fill jobs in specialties where there is a shortage of staff. Although shortages are acknowledged in the promotional material for the new NHS international fellowship scheme, the difficulties that doctors will face when they attempt to return home are ignored. Experience with previous schemes, such as the overseas doctors' training scheme, suggests that few doctors returned to their home countries. Indeed, when I finished my training in psychiatry in the United Kingdom in 1992, I found that few routes were available to facilitate my return to India.2 My work in developing countries over the past decade has been entirely funded by research grants, mainly from the Wellcome Trust. Acknowledgments I thank Gauri Divan for the title of this article.