The NHS has scrapped a longstanding scheme that let overseas doctors boost their skills in UK hospitals and was seen as an example of British “soft power”.
Senior doctors have criticised NHS England’s decision to axe the Medical Training Initiative, under which 400 to 500 foreign-trained doctors were given placements in Britain every year.
The MTI is known in the NHS as “earn, learn and return”. It enabled medical graduates from low- and middle-income countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal to spend up to two years in the health service enhancing their skills, making them better doctors when they went home.
The UK’s medical royal colleges are aghast at the unexpected and “abrupt” axing of a programme they say helped not just the medics but the NHS and their home countries. It had cost NHS England just £176,000 to fund each year and has given thousands of overseas doctors a chance to work in the UK since it was set up in 2011.
Some fear it will exacerbate the already acute shortage of doctors across an NHS that relies very heavily on international graduates, who comprise two-fifths of all its medics.
Source: The Guardian, 31 July 2026
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