Investing in learning and training refugee doctors.

Background: Medically qualified refugees seek to build a new life and return to clinical medicine. The National Health Service (NHS) in the UK needs to develop a workforce to meet the needs of the communities it serves, and refugee doctors have the potential to contribute to the NHS, using their experience and skills to benefit patients.

Methods: Fifty-four per cent of refugee doctors in the UK live in London, so in response, the London Deanery (Postgraduate Department of Medical and Dental Education, London University) has undertaken a series of initiatives over the past 8 years assisting refugee doctors back into medical employment.

Narratives in a users' and carers' group: meanings and impact.

Background: Carers who wished to share their experiences with a national working group (the Consumer Group) prepared narratives as a way of identifying areas for discussion.

Methods: The narratives were submitted to one author and subjected to thematic qualitative analysis. The themes were fed back to the Group for discussion.

A successful initiative for getting refugee doctors back into medical employment: the PRIME project.

Refugee doctors find it difficult to get back to medical work in their new countries. This article describes the setting up and evaluation of the Placing Refugee doctors In Medical Employment (PRIME) project which resulted in 15 out of 25 participants getting substantive jobs in open competition within a year, and suggests this approach should be more widely adopted.

Structured clinical attachments for international medical graduates.

Clinical attachments are an opportunity for international medical graduates to gain some firsthand experience of the U.K. medical system and thereby improve their chances of finding employment.

Helping refugee doctors get their first jobs: the pan-London clinical attachment scheme.

Refugee doctors are a potentially valuable addition to the medical workforce in the UK. Despite this, they often have trouble getting jobs. An innovative structured clinical attachment scheme resulted in 17 out of 29 refugee doctors being appointed to jobs.

Induction for overseas qualified doctors.

This study describes a strategy for the integration of overseas doctors with different professional and cultural backgrounds. A central induction course, complementing local trust-based induction programmes, was developed and evaluated by the London Deanery. Most participants found the course helpful, and their comments were used to further improve it.