My Medical Gateway Blog

A growing number of UK doctors are leaving the NHS for better conditions abroad, turning medical travel into a two-way phenomenon. As patients seek faster treatment overseas, healthcare professionals are also migrating for improved pay, work-life balance and system support – especially to Australia. This shift highlights the UK’s deep systemic healthcare failures. MMG recognises that modern medical travel includes both patients and clinicians, and is positioned to support cross-border mobility in both directions.

Medical travel has long been defined by patients seeking faster, better or more affordable treatment abroad. But in the United Kingdom, a new and growing dimension of medical mobility has emerged, this time involving the healthcare workforce itself. As dissatisfaction with NHS working conditions deepens, large numbers of British doctors are now actively exploring relocation overseas, turning medical migration into a two-way phenomenon: not only are patients leaving the UK in search of care, but doctors are leaving in search of a functioning healthcare system.

The most recent data from the General Medical Council (GMC) paints a stark picture. Some 43 per cent of UK doctors have considered working abroad. Of these, 15 per cent have taken “hard steps” towards leaving, such as applying for jobs, speaking with overseas recruiters, or arranging school visits for their children. The same GMC report reveals that 12 per cent are actively planning to work abroad, and nearly 19 per cent are considering leaving the medical profession altogether. These are not idle threats. Between 2022 and 2023, 1,974 British medical professionals emigrated to Australia – a 67 per cent increase in a single year.

This accelerating exodus is being driven by a clear set of grievances: low pay, overwhelming workloads, a lack of professional autonomy and a pervasive sense of disillusionment with the NHS. According to GMC survey data, 79 per cent of doctors cited higher salaries abroad as a motivating factor, 75 per cent said they felt undervalued in the UK, 72 per cent sought a better quality of life, and 62 per cent said they wanted improved personal wellbeing.

Australia has positioned itself as the primary beneficiary of this crisis. British-trained doctors now make up a substantial share of emergency department staff in many Australian hospitals. The President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners recently described UK doctors as having made a “huge difference” to the medical workforce in regional and rural areas of the country. Australian healthcare employers are aggressively targeting disaffected NHS staff, even advertising at the picket lines of recent junior doctor strikes in the UK. Streamlined immigration and credentialing pathways for GPs make the transition even more appealing.

What is being witnessed is a quiet but consequential “brain drain” of British-trained talent: an outward flow of highly educated professionals that costs the UK taxpayer billions annually in lost training investment. This phenomenon does more than just highlight individual frustration. It reflects the structural failure of a health system that cannot retain its core workforce, even among those who still believe in its founding principles. Many of the doctors leaving the UK continue to support the idea of a publicly funded healthcare system. What they no longer support is the practical reality of working within one that is mismanaged, wasteful and politically gridlocked.

This shift is highly relevant to the mission and evolution of My Medical Gateway (MMG). While MMG’s platform has traditionally focused on enabling patients to access affordable, high-quality care abroad, the growing movement of healthcare staff across borders is shaping a broader ecosystem of medical mobility. Medical travel is no longer a patient-only story; it increasingly includes clinicians themselves, migrating for many of the same reasons as the patients they once treated.

The convergence of these two trends – patients seeking better care and doctors seeking better working environments – has strategic implications. A digital marketplace such as MMG is well positioned to connect not just patients to treatment, but also healthcare professionals to new opportunities within higher-functioning systems abroad. The infrastructure being built to automate medical travel logistics – finance, insurance, payments, hospital matching and patient support – can naturally be extended to support clinician mobility. Just as MMG enables patients to bypass domestic waiting lists and broken bureaucracies, it can also serve as a trusted platform for British-trained medical professionals looking to continue their careers in better-run, better-resourced health systems overseas.

Skeptics may argue that many doctors who express interest in leaving often change their mind. While this may be true to an extent, the numbers taking concrete steps are now too large to ignore. The GMC’s own report found that around 30 per cent of UK doctors believe they are likely to work abroad in the next 12 months: that is an estimated 96,000 individuals, of whom more than 40,000 described their departure as “very likely.”

The UK Government faces a difficult – and perhaps unsolvable – dilemma: how to preserve the ideal of universal, taxpayer-funded care without bankrupting public finances or burning out those tasked with delivering it. The NHS, with its 1.35 million-strong workforce, has become not just a healthcare system but a dominant feature of the UK economy. Its funding demands are now shaping fiscal policy, political debate and workforce planning across the entire public sector. The economy increasingly appears geared towards sustaining the NHS itself, rather than delivering effective care. While vast resources are diverted into holding the system together, it is Australia – and others – that are reaping the rewards of Britain’s policy paralysis. British-trained doctors continue to exit the system, while growing numbers of patients seek treatment abroad. The NHS loses on both fronts.

The definition of medical travel must now be widened. It no longer describes only the movement of patients across borders. It must also account for the migration of clinicians – those who, unable to reconcile their ideals with a crumbling system, choose to practice elsewhere. Medical travel, in 2025, is a two-way street – and MMG stands ready to support both directions.