Sixty years ago India and Pakistan gained their independence, the NHS was founded and Geriatrics was established as a specialty. Since the inception of the NHS migrant doctors have provided a significant contribution to its workforce. This contribution has been particularly striking in Geriatrics where just under a quarter of all consultants are overseas trained. However, most research has tended to view such migration through the narrow lens of brain drain, and has usually been based on the analysis of large scale statistical datasets. There has thus been little recognition of the importance of these doctors in shaping medical provision in the UK and their experiences have been overlooked.
Older people are often marginalised within the UK healthcare system. How and where older people are cared for has been of key concern for geriatric medicine since its establishment in the middle of the last century. South Asian overseas trained doctors have been a part of this pioneering process but hitherto their role has been unrecognised in the history of UK medicine.
The project aims fill a gap in the history of the NHS and the history of migration to the UK by highlighting the contributions and recording the experiences of these doctors before they are lost for ever.