The workforce opportunity we're not talking about

Thousands of refugee clinicians already live in the UK. Creating better routes back into professional practice could strengthen NHS teams while changing lives.

By Amerjit Chohan, Helpforce CEO 

When Yana Flyenko arrived in the UK after fleeing the war in Ukraine, she wasn't looking for sympathy. She wanted to continue the career she had spent years building as a doctor and medical lecturer. 

Like many refugee healthcare professionals, she had every right to work in the UK. What she didn't have was a straightforward route back into professional practice. 

Too often we think about medically qualified refugees in terms of the support they need rather than the skills they bring. Yet across the country are experienced doctors, nurses, midwives, psychiatrists and allied health professionals whose expertise has not disappeared simply because conflict or persecution forced them to leave home. 

Yana Flyenko                        

When we first began exploring this area at Helpforce, we kept coming back to the same question: how do we help talented healthcare professionals navigate the journey back into careers they have already spent years building while maintaining the professional standards that patients rightly expect? 

That thinking led us to develop Volunteer to Career for Refugees. We weren't looking to create an alternative route into healthcare. We wanted to create a better-supported one. 

The programme builds on Helpforce's wider Volunteer to Career model, helping refugee clinicians gain experience of NHS practice, rebuild confidence after prolonged periods away from clinical work and reconnect with their professional identity while progressing towards professional registration. It doesn't replace formal assessment or professional regulation. It helps people approach those challenges with greater confidence. 

One thing that has genuinely surprised me is how often participants tell us that volunteering didn't simply give them NHS experience. It gave them back the confidence to believe they belonged in healthcare again. 

Yana's story illustrates that perfectly. Through a volunteering placement at Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust, she rebuilt her confidence while preparing for the examinations required for General Medical Council registration. Today, she is awaiting confirmation of that registration and hopes to return to practising medicine. 

According to the British Medical Association, around 2,000 refugee doctors are currently living in the UK, alongside many more refugee nurses, midwives, psychiatrists and allied health professionals. Not all will return to clinical practice, nor will all choose to. But if even a proportion do, patients, colleagues and the wider NHS stand to benefit. 

Those numbers aren't simply about filling vacancies. They represent experienced professionals whose judgement, compassion and clinical expertise have already been developed over many years. 

Yana is far from alone. Through Helpforce's work I've also encountered Ahmed Bakheet, an experienced sonographer from Sudan who, after fleeing persecution, spent more than three years unable to work while his asylum claim was determined. Volunteering at University Hospitals Tees helped him reconnect with his profession, rebuild his confidence and ultimately return to sonography. 

Their journeys were very different, but the challenges they encountered were remarkably similar. Neither was asking for special treatment. Both simply wanted the opportunity to demonstrate what they were capable of. 

One reason these journeys can be so difficult is that responsibility is spread across employers, professional regulators, education providers, charities and support organisations. Each has an important role, but no single organisation owns the journey from beginning to end. It's hardly surprising that people can overcome one hurdle only to encounter another. 

Volunteer to Career for Refugees is Helpforce's response to that challenge. But programmes like this succeed only through genuine partnership. 

Alongside our programme, pioneering work by organisations such as West London NHS Trust, together with the expertise of NHS Employers, the Refugee Council, Breaking Barriers and the Ukrainian Medical Charity, have helped around 300 refugee healthcare professionals move into paid healthcare roles over the past three years. Together these initiatives show that, while the barriers are real, they can be reduced. 

Working in this area has changed how I think about volunteering. It remains an act of giving back, but it can also become a pathway back into professional practice for people whose careers have been interrupted by circumstances beyond their control. 

That isn't just good for the individuals involved. It's good for NHS organisations and, ultimately, for patients. 

When we talk about workforce, the conversation understandably focuses on the future: how many people we'll need, where they'll come from and how we'll retain them. Those questions aren't going away. But I think we should spend a little more time looking at the skilled people who are already living in our communities and are determined to contribute. 

No single programme will solve workforce shortages. But relatively modest interventions can unlock talent that is already here, waiting for an opportunity. 

Workforce planning is often about forecasting future need. Increasingly, I think it also needs to be about recognising overlooked talent. 

We've seen enough to know this approach can work. More importantly, we've seen what it means to people who finally find a route back into the professions they thought they had lost. 

Every NHS organisation will find its own way of addressing this challenge. My hope is that more will build on the experience that already exists and create new routes back into professional practice for refugee clinicians who still have so much to offer. Helpforce stands ready to assist.