In recent years, the number of refugees coming to the UK, particularly from the Middle East and Africa, has increased, and the BMA currently has details of over 600 Refugee Doctors in the UK, a small number of whom are now working in the NHS.

In the same time frame, recruitment to both Primary and Secondary Care training places has decreased, particularly in the East Midlands, and the number of doctors leaving the NHS has increased, both as an effect of early retirement from NHS practice, and emigration abroad. There has never been greater need for more doctors to be recruited to work in the NHS.

The Lincolnshire Refugee Doctor Project has three main aims:

To recruit Refugee Doctors to Lincolnshire, to support them within the community here, to provide them with the skills and knowledge required to satisfy examination in Language and Clinical Skills, and to allow them to practice safely as medical practitioners in the UK.

To give Refugee Doctors a meaningful experience of being valued in the health community of Lincolnshire.

Benefits:

• Humanitarian support to refugee doctors and their families
• Humanitarian opportunities for people and organisations in Lincolnshire to help refugee families
• Workforce stabilisation: creating a further source of doctors for a struggling community where doctors retiring and leaving far outnumber new doctors arising
• Workforce diversification and development, inclusion of a pool of doctors with very different stories and journeys into the Lincolnshire medical environment