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Refugee and Asylum Seekers Centre for Healthcare Professionals’ Education
REACHE stands for Refugee and Asylum Seekers Centre for Healthcare Professionals’ Education
REACHE North West supports refugee and asylum seeker doctors, nurses and allied health professionals on a comprehensive pathway into NHS employment.
REACHE is the only UK programme to currently offer refugee and asylum seekers a complete in-house pathway to registration with the General Medical Council (GMC) and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
The REACHE programme offers
- English language teaching for the Occupational English Test (OET)
- Fully integrated programme of language, communications skills and clinical teaching
- PLAB 1 and PLAB 2 exam support required for GMC registration
- Pastoral package including counselling, coaching, housing and employment support
- Clinical programme led by experienced GPs and hospital consultants
- 12 module professionalism training packages for international medical graduates
- Cultural adaptation support
- Outreach referrals for people and their families.
Est 2003 and funded by Health Education England.
Since inception until 2022:
- 612 refugee and asylum seeker healthcare professionals supported
- 289 REACHE refugee and asylum seeker doctors work in the NHS
- Over 500 REACHE refugee and asylum seekers work as GPs, associate specialists, consultants, speciality trainees, nurses, lab technicians, radiographers or dentists in the NHS.
- 87% of people in the programme are from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan
It takes anywhere from 3 months to 2.5 years to retrain from REACHE programme to employment within the NHS.
By training refugee and asylum seekers, the REACHE programme has saved the public purse £6.5 million.
We partner with:
- Health Education England
- NHS Northern Care Alliance
- University of Manchester
REACHE has been supporting health professionals since 2003, is hosted at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust and is funded by Health Education England.