Brexit led to 1,500 deaths a year as EU nurses left UK, study finds

Brexit's disastrous impact on the NHS led to 1,485 extra deaths per year, according to a new academic study.

Researchers from the University of Surrey say that after the 2016 leave vote, EU nurses left and were replaced by less experienced or skilled staff, which had a knock-on effect for patients.

Professor Giuseppe Moscelli, the lead investigator of the study, said: "Brexit has had real life-or-death consequences for patients in our hospitals... (as the loss of staff) led to a measurable decline in care quality.”

Prof Moscelli said the study had two important findings for taxpayers and policymakers.

The first was the “critical role that skilled migrant nurses play in the NHS, particularly in emergency care, where the stakes are highest,” he said.

Secondly, he warned of the UK’s “considerable reliance” on foreign nurses and the need to train more healthcare professionals in the UK “to prevent similar quality of hospital service deteriorations in the future."

The study looked at patient-level data from 131 NHS hospitals in England, including mortality rates and unplanned emergency readmissions.

It estimates that in the three years after the 2016 referendum the NHS faced a staggering 34 extra deaths per hospital with what the authors termed “average exposure to the Brexit shock”.

Alongside a “staggering drop” in the number of EU nurses coming into hospitals in the wake of the referendum and a simultaneous sharp increase in the share of non-EU foreign nurses hired, the pool of new nurse hires had lower experience or skills and were paid lower salaries.

This change in the make up of the workforce is the “most likely” reason for the increase in mortality and unplanned readmission rates, the authors say.

The study is not the first to look at the effect of Brexit on the NHS workforce.

In 2017 a paper in the Lancet warned the health service risked being hit by fewer EU nationals coming to work in the UK, with London and the south-east particularly affected.

In part in a bid to replace EU staff the NHS in England has hired tens of thousands of health staff from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe since the UK officially left the EU at the end of 2020.

The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.