NEARLY one in five doctors from EU countries working in the NHS have made plans to quit the UK according to research by the British Medical Association.

And almost half of the health service’s 12,000 medics from the European Economic Area (EEA) are considering moving abroad, the British Medical Association survey of 1,720 of them found.

The findings come amid growing evidence that Brexit may exacerbate problems of understaffing in the NHS by making both retention and recruitment of EU staff more difficult.

In September NHS figures showed that more than 10,000 staff from EU countries had quit since the Brexit vote. And the number of EU nurses coming to the UK has dropped by 89 per cent in the last year, Nursing and Midwifery Council figures released this month showed.

In total, 45 per cent of respondents to the UK-wide BMA survey said they were thinking about leaving Britain following the result of the EU referendum in June 2016 – three percentage points more than when the BMA ran a similar poll in February.

Among those who were considering going elsewhere 39 per cent – or 18 per cent of the whole sample – have already made plans to leave. The 12,000 doctors from the EEA (the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) represent 7.7 per cent of the NHS’s medical workforce across the UK.

Some of those leaving have been offered jobs abroad, while others are applying for posts overseas. Some have begun the process of seeking citizenship elsewhere, while others are having their qualifications validated so they can work in another country, the BMA said.

In Scotland, 140 EEA-trained doctors responded to the survey with 34 per cent considering leaving, while 14 per cent had made plans to leave – a lower rate than the UK average, although the BMA said caution was needed in interpreting the results due to the small sample size.

“We have warned for some time that the ongoing uncertainty over the future status of EEA nationals is deeply and needlessly damaging,” said Dr Peter Bennie, Chair of BMA Scotland.

“These are our friends and our colleagues and too many of them continue to face uncertainty over what their future will be.

“The NHS in Scotland simply cannot afford to lose the valued contributions that so many doctors from elsewhere in Europe make to it.”

He added: “The Scottish Government has been clear that it wants to protect the rights of European NHS staff and this is welcome and appreciated by many, but it is ultimately the Westminster Government that must act before further damage is done.”

Dr Philippa Whitford MP, the SNP’s health spokeswoman at Westminster, said: “It is appalling that 17 months on from the EU referendum EU nationals still don’t know whether they will have their rights protected.

“It is very worrying that 20 per cent of doctors from EU countries who are working in the NHS are making plans to leave. The UK Government should have given EU nationals security and certainty [about their status] on 24 June last year.”

Scottish Labour’s Brexit spokesperson Lewis Macdonald said: “The contribution of EU citizens who have migrated to the United Kingdom is immense. EU migration has brought not just significant economic value, but a huge cultural benefit too, and that we must never forget.

“The health service has seen a huge benefit from freedom of movement, with an enormous number of EU citizens working in our NHS. These are people who care for us in our times of desperate need and with the staffing problems that already exist in the Scottish NHS, it is little surprise the BMA Scotland chair has said we cannot afford to lose the contributions EU staff make to our health service.”

The Department of Health said figures released last week by the GMC, showing a slight year-on-year rise in 2016-17 in the number of EEA doctors joining its medical register, showed the BMA’s findings were inaccurate.

CASE STUDY

DR Andreas Herfurt is a German doctor living in the Highlands. He came to Scotland in 1994 to look for a job and found one in a small practice in Bettyhill in Sutherland.

He is a rural GP in a village of just 300 people and said the UK Government is making the situation difficult for him and other EU nationals.

He considers Scotland to be his home and doesn’t want to leave but believes the UK Government “doesn’t care about people like me”.

He said applying for residency looks to be fraught with hurdles and hoops and said that if the UK Government really cared about people who have made their life and work here, they would be more direct with them about what will happen.