London: Britain's National Health Service is to offer cash incentives to Australian GPs in an attempt to fill an alarming shortage of family doctors across the country.
NHS England has said it will offer £18,500 ($34,000) to British GPs who have relocated and Australian-trained doctors who want to live and work in the UK.
Details of the recruitment plans were outlined at the Royal College of GPs' annual conference in Glasgow on Thursday, with a target of 2000 foreign doctors hoped to be in place by 2020/21.
The NHS is aiming to have 2000 foreign doctors in place by 2020/21.
The initiative mirrors the success of the London Ambulance Service recruiting more than 500 paramedics from Australia and New Zealand in the past four years.
GP vacancy rates in Britain are the highest on record, with more than a 1000 doctors leaving the NHS in the past three years, many citing unmanageable workloads and increasing demands.
Two recruitment agencies have been tasked with finding suitable candidates, and the British government has relaxed of a cap on workers from outside the European Economic Area.
This could lead to the application procedure for Australian doctors reduced from a year to three months.
“It's no secret the NHS needs to recruit more GPs, so it makes sense to head to Australia where doctors' skills, training and high levels of care closely match those of their British counterparts,” Dominic Hardy, NHS England's director of primary care delivery, told the London Evening Standard.
AAP
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