The NHS is there to provide medical, health and wellbeing services to everyone living in the UK. As a publicly funded healthcare system, its services are largely paid for with taxes rather than through individual treatment bills being sent to patients.
Healthcare through the NHS is provided in two ways: primary and secondary care.
- Primary care is delivered by general practitioners (GPs) in the community. It’s not possible to get secondary care without initial referral from a GP, except for emergency treatment.
- Secondary care is provided in a hospital setting. All referrals are made by a GP and each patient is allocated to a particular consultant (specialist) who will retain overall responsibility for that patient’s care, whether as an inpatient or an outpatient, until the patient is discharged.
Within hospitals, doctors work in multidisciplinary teams to provide secondary care. These teams might include consultants, doctors in training, doctors in non-training posts (e.g. staff grades and associate specialists), nurses, midwives, therapists and allied healthcare professionals, alongside a range of scientific and technical staff.
Private practice
The majority of obstetrics is delivered by obstetricians and midwives under the NHS. Where private obstetrics is offered, the service tends to be provided by consultant obstetricians with midwife support. For the most part, these services are confined to major cities, primarily London and the surrounding area.
Private gynaecology is also offered by consultants, usually through private hospitals or clinics.
If you have obtained your maternity degree outside the UK, this does not prevent you from working in the UK. 8.7% (11206 doctors) of the doctors working in the UK are citizens of EU countries and 21.7% (28039 doctors) are citizens of non-EU countries. In total, approximately one-third of the doctors working in the NHS in England come from 200 different countries.
If you want to work as a doctor in the UK, you can start a new life by doing the determined jobs, as do about 40000 doctors who think like you.
