Jennifer Lee is desperate to work in the NHS. A doctor with Ivy League training, she has specialised in respiratory and intensive care medicine for more than a decade in New York. Her skills are crucial in the current crisis. But according to the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), she remains one of thousands of experienced foreign doctors being excluded from the battle against coronavirus by “unnecessary and hostile red tape”.

“I’ve been doing everything I can to get registered with the GMC [General Medical Council] and have just been stalled and faced roadblocks at every turn,” Lee said. “This is an international emergency; I’m a doctor and it’s my calling. It’s beyond frustrating to not be able to help.”

Lee, who moved to London eight months ago, is one of a dozen overseas doctors who spoke to the Observer about the difficulty of getting accredited in the UK. “So much energy and resources have gone into trying to recruit former doctors, many of them older and at higher risk, back into the NHS, when there is an eager cohort of us ready to go,” she said.

The GMC has used emergency powers to automatically register around 30,000 doctors who had retired, left the profession or are still in their final year of medical school. With one in four doctors currently off sick or in self-isolation, the demand has never been more urgent.

I'm an anaesthetist; I have nine years’ medical experience but now my final exam with the GMC has been cancelled Syrian refugee doctor

A European medic, who wished to remain anonymous, reported working as a junior doctor in the NHS for two years before working abroad, then returning to the UK to practise. “I was granted provisional registration by the GMC based on my EU qualification and experience … but I have [since been] told that I am not eligible for full registration to work in this pandemic. It’s extraordinary.”

A petition co-ordinated by RefuAid and Help Refugees is also lobbying the GMC to apply its emergency powers to hundreds of refugee doctors who have already passed English-language and written exams with the GMC, but are unable to work on the frontline as their final exams in clinical care have been cancelled.

“In the midst of the worst public health crisis we’ve ever known, this country is missing out on the incredible experience and expertise of hundreds of doctors, many of whom are used to working in emergencies and bearing huge medical responsibility, all because the registration process for overseas-qualified doctors is slow, expensive and inaccessible,” said Josie Naughton, CEO of Help Refugees.

“We urgently need the GMC to find safe and practical ways to expedite this process.”

Last Thursday, NHS England announced it was recruiting medical support workers, a new role aimed at deploying medical students and refugee doctors in auxiliary roles. The GMC permits these doctors to help as part of clinical care teams, but not as registered doctors able to appropriately use their skills and experience.

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One Syrian refugee doctor, who wanted to remain anonymous, questioned the strategy. “I specialised as an anaesthetist; I have nine years’ medical experience but now my final exam with the GMC, which is a role play with the doctor and an actor playing a patient, has been cancelled. But this is what I would be doing practically if I were to go work as a medical support worker, so why can’t that count?”

Dr Jenny Vaughan, law and policy lead at DAUK, called for greater coordination between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Home Office “to ensure that every single doctor who could be saving lives is able to do so”.

She added: “We expect the government to be pulling out all the stops to ensure that the GMC is enabled to register as many doctors who want to work as possible. We are still hearing from perfectly able doctors that their applications are being held up by unnecessary and hostile red tape.”

In a statement, Una Lane, the GMC’s director of registration and revalidation, said the body was adhering to guidelines set out by the government. “[Our] work is guided by what government and health services need and ask of us, which is why we have agreed with the UK’s chief medical officers to re-register specific groups of doctors.”