For those who don’t know the organisation, RefuAid supports refugees in trying to restart their life in the UK and helping them find employment opportunities. They work with a large number of highly skilled doctors and nurses and have considerable experience of matching them up with those hospitals with a particular skills gap.
Following an introduction to RefuAid by the DHSC, Julie Screaton, Chief People Officer at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and Chair of the Shelford Workforce Directors subgroup, which represents the HR Directors and Chief People Officers of our ten hospital trusts, facilitated a session with Steve Duffy, Anna Jones, Kate Higgins and Finan Tretheway from RefuAid. This allowed them the opportunity to introduce the sub- group to RefuAid and explain how the recruitment process works. Following this meeting, the group kept in regular touch with Steve to see if there were matches that could be made. This work continues across a number of trusts.
Furthest along in the process are Guy’s and St Thomas‘ where several doctors are already working at the trust. The HR team at GSTT have been hugely impressed with the process commenting that, “the relationship with RefuAid has proven to be very beneficial so far – their team have been very responsive, and provided us with a list of refugee doctors, clearly divided into doctors with or without GMC registration and a licence to practice.” Describing how the process works in practise they interviewed a number of doctors, prioritising those with a GMC licence and who were London based. So far, they have recruited four doctors and offered three month contracts with a commitment to providing a range of clinical and non-clinical training to the doctors. The GSTT spokesperson added that, “based on our recent experience we will explore the relationship with RefuAid further with a view to supporting future applications to posts within the Trust”.
At the time of writing, alongside Manchester, a number of other trusts are also in dialogue with RefuAid about placements for both doctors and nurses. Steve Duffy, RefuAid’s Head of Client Recruitment is hopeful that the positive experiences of the Shelford Group will encourage other collaborations in the future. He told us that “working with the Shelford Group has opened up some incredibly encouraging opportunities for our doctors at some of the country’s most renowned hospitals. Having successfully placed doctors at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in March, we’re currently working with other Shelford Group Trusts to do the same there. We’re hoping that the positive experience of these trusts will encourage others to explore the rich, underutilized talent pool of refugee doctors in the UK”.
Currently, Imperial College Healthcare are in discussions with RefuAid about the possibility of placing doctors into their hospitals and we hope to be able to write an update in a few months time on how the doctors have settled in within the various hospitals. For more information of RefuAid please visit their website and feel free to contact us at the Shelford Group to discuss our experiences.