Healthcare Workers Moving Abroad: What Official Pages Say

Why recruiting health workers is an ethical question

WHO estimates a projected shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle income countries. It also says the increasing international migration of health workers may exacerbate health workforce shortfalls, particularly in low- and lower-middle income countries. Among the guiding principles of WHO’s Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030, which the page calls the key guiding document, is to ensure ethical recruitment practices in conformity with the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. Read what that code says before you sign with a recruitment agency.

WHO: Health workforce

United Kingdom: the Health and Care Worker visa

GOV.UK says the visa allows medical professionals to come to or stay in the UK to do an eligible job with the NHS, an NHS supplier or in adult social care. To qualify you must be a qualified doctor, nurse, health professional or adult social care professional; work in an eligible health or social care job; work for a UK employer that has been approved by the Home Office; have a certificate of sponsorship from your employer; and be paid a minimum salary, which depends on the type of work. A confirmed job offer is needed before you apply.

The overview says the visa can last for up to 5 years before you need to extend it, that you will usually get a decision within 3 weeks once you have applied online, proved your identity and provided your documents, and that you and your partner or children will not have to pay the healthcare surcharge. Eligible jobs are listed on a separate GOV.UK page, “Your job”, which is not repeated in full here; check it before relying on this summary.

On that page, the list of occupation codes for new applications does not include care workers. It lists care workers and home carers (code 6135) and senior care workers (code 6136) among the ‘medium skilled’ codes for people who are extending, updating or switching to the visa.

GOV.UK: Health and Care Worker visa

GOV.UK: Health and Care Worker visa, Your job

Canada: the Express Entry healthcare category

Canada’s immigration department lists healthcare and social services occupations among the current Express Entry categories. To be eligible for that category you must have accumulated, within the past 3 years, at least 12 months of full-time work experience (or an equal amount of part-time experience), which does not need to be continuous, in a single occupation listed in the table on the page, in Canada or abroad, and meet all requirements in the instructions for that round. The page shows a modified date of 2026-10-16. This article does not cover professional licensing in Canada; no licensing page was read.

IRCC: Express Entry category-based selection

Australia: qualifications are assessed before registration

Ahpra’s page for international health practitioners shows a table of qualification assessment pathways by profession. For nursing and midwifery it says qualifications are assessed by Ahpra before you apply for registration. For medicine it says there are four assessment pathways and that all require qualification assessment before you apply for registration. For dental practitioners it says qualifications are assessed by the Australian Dental Council before you apply for registration. The page is about registration; the immigration side for Australia is not covered in this article.

Ahpra: International health practitioners

Germany: recognition for regulated professions

The German recognition portal says recognition is necessary for foreign skilled workers who want to work in Germany in a regulated profession, with one stated exception for skilled workers from the EU, EEA or Switzerland who only occasionally practise their occupation or profession in Germany. It describes regulated professions as professions in which the activities are legally protected, and says this applies primarily to professions in the health, safety and social services sectors such as medical practitioner or teacher. In regulated professions, further criteria for authorisation to practise must also be met. The portal points to a tool it calls the Profi-Filter for finding out whether a profession is regulated.

Anerkennung in Deutschland: Professional recognition

Related guides on this site

These guides cover single professions and destinations: nurses compared, doctors compared, nurses in Germany, nurses in the UAE, nurses in Singapore and nurses in Spain.

What this article does not cover

It gives no salary ranges, processing times, language-test levels, recognition durations or ranking of countries, and it does not describe Ireland, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Singapore or Norway. The earlier version gave those figures for ten countries without a primary source; they were removed. Where this article is silent, no primary source was read; the silence is not a rule.