70% of doctors who started working in the UK in 2023 graduated from medicine in our country, bTV and "Financial Times" report.
According to data from the General Medical Council for 2023, Bulgaria is the country with the largest increase in the number of medical graduates entering the British labor market.
In 2023 435 of the 622 doctors (70%) who have joined the UK workforce are British with a professional medical qualification in Bulgaria.
The British government reports that there are currently over 2,500 British students studying for higher education in medicine and dentistry in Bulgaria. They are mainly studying in Plovdiv, Varna and Sofia. The other popular destinations in the European Union are Poland and Romania.
The British health system is in the process of recruiting staff and the number of places to study medicine at universities has increased by more than a third since 2017, increasing from 7,660 to 10,415 in the current academic year. However, demand is still greater than supply.
The National Health Service (NHS) Workforce Plan 2023 aims to open 15,000 places in UK medical schools by 2031-2032. In the meantime, the NHS relies on recruiting staff from abroad, including countries such as Pakistan and Ghana, which are on the international "red list" for doctor shortages.
The UK Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that the NHS has become too dependent on doctors from other countries and too many top British students are not getting places in UK medical schools.