Trainee doctor Felicia Buruiana first realised the newspaper headlines warning of a tide of Romanian beggars and benefits cheats were starting to intrude on her day-to-day life when patients began taking a keen interest in her background.

At first the 37-year-old got "funny looks" when she told them she was Romanian because she "didn't look like a gypsy". Then, as the political and media rhetoric around Romanian and Bulgarian immigration to the UK grew more toxic, patients' attitudes began to harden.

"There was this certain reaction," says Buruiana over a coffee at the end of her shift at her new hospital in Hertfordshire. "People would tut or pull a face when I said I was Romanian. In the end it was happening all the time and it made things very difficult. I was going home thinking: this is so disappointing, so sad, so tiring. This is not the UK I had got to know."

There are several thousand Romanian and Bulgarians working in the NHS filling key roles from midwives to surgeons. According to the latest GMC figures, 2,140 doctors who qualified in Romania are currently in post in the UK – more than from Australia, Poland or Spain. But as the debate intensified around the lifting of working restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians on 1 January, many medics who had lived and worked in the UK for years, have experienced an upturn in hostility.

Sitting behind his desk at the embassy in west London, the UK's Romanian ambassador, Ion Jinga, points to a pile of print-outs in front of him. They are letters and emails he has recieved in the past few days from Romanians based in the UK who say they are facing growing levels of discrimination. One is from a young dentist who says she was racially abused by a patient who told her: "Romanians should be working on farms not as dentists."

Jinga looks up from the papers: "I am really sad to hear these cases of discrimination due, in large part, to the tabloid media campaign and the vilification of Romanians and Bulgarians. I know this attitude is not a characteristic of the British society and therefore I very much hope that the public opinion here will strongly reject and condemn such discriminatory acts."

Campaign groups say the difficulties experienced by NHS workers is part of rising tide of hostility towards immigrants from from Romania and Bulgaria – and warn that things are likely to get worse in the runup to May's European elections.

Sitting in a corner of the Great Court at the British Museum in London, Tommy Tomescu, a Romanian dentist who came to the UK in 2010, has decided it is time to fight back. After reading a newspaper article about the numbers of Romanians being arrested early last year Tomescu became so angry at the "twisting of the facts" that he set up a a new campaign group, the Alliance Against Romanian and Bulgarian Discrimination.

Tommy Tomescu, a Romanian dentist who came to the UK in 2010. Photograph: David Levene

Over the past 12 months – between working as an NHS dentist in West Sussex and volunteering as a lecturer in London once a week – he has waged a vigorous campaign, organising three demonstrations, the last one attracting more than 100 people, presented a petition to David Cameron at 10 Downing Street and lobbied EU officials and heads of state.

On Sunday there will be another demonstration in central London in support of the female dentist who said she had been racially abused by a patient who told her that Romanians should only be allowed to work on a farm.

"She started to shake … she was really very upset by this," says Tomescu as tourists mill around the museum cafe.

Tomescu, 32, came to the UK because of better pay and to further his career, and says he has been exasperated by the way sections of the media and some politicians have whipped up fears about Romanian and Bulgarian immigration.

"We are being used and these people know it is not right but they are doing it anyway because it suits them… They just want to be seen doing something against Romanians – that is what they care about in the government. For them – in terms of votes – it is good. But for us and for UK it is not good."

He says headlines like "How Romanian criminals terrorise our streets" and "Benefits Britain here we come" have left him and his Romanian friends disorientated – and angry.

"What we are seeing in the papers is a different reality," he said. "Suddenly my life, the reality of my life day to day, has been overtaken by this depiction of Romanians as this big scary problem. It is a very frustrating situation."

And he warns that other young, highly skilled Romanians are now thinking twice about coming to what they perceive to be a racist UK.

"I know that is not the real story of this country but that is the impression people in Romania are starting to get."

Tomescu is recovering from the flu and admits that the campaign is taking its toll. "Sometimes I am tired and I do not feel like all this work but I open another newspaper and I see the same lies again, so I get angry and I feel I must continue what I am doing."

He says he wants to make the British public aware that Romanians and Bulgarians are not a problem for the UK: "We don't have such a big influence and we have also lots of positive things."

Finishing her coffee, Buruiana, who speaks five foreign languages and has a PhD and two master's degrees, agrees that many Romanians are making a positive contribution to the UK.

"There are so many people like me: honest people paying taxes, doing our best," she says.

She has now moved to a different hospital and last year she became a British citizen – giving her dual nationality.

As she gets ready to leave she insists she remains very fond – and proud – of her adopted country.

"The UK has always been a country to be admired. There are so many people from so many backgrounds and continents and it is a place where we learn to be open-minded and that we are not alone in this world," she says.

And has her experience in the past 12 months changed her?

"I suppose it has made me react in a way that now I say I am proud to be Romanian, and to say yes, Romanians do look like me."

• This article was updated on 27 January to correct information about Felicia Buruiana's academic qualifications. It initially stated that she had two PhDs.