Newsletter 1
Dear Reader,
We are pleased to share our first newsletter with updates and progress from the Making it to the Registers project.
Making it to the Registers was conceived with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the impact of professional registration for internationally trained health professionals in the UK.
Since the project launched in March 2023, we have dedicated the initial months to archival research to understand the historical experiences of registration and to explore how regulators, historically and in the present day, adapted registration requirements for emergency conditions. Over the summer, the University of Leeds team visited the National Archives, British Medical Association Archives, Wellcome Library, The Women’s Library, India Office Records, Wiener Holocaust Library, and Hull History Centre.
We have also begun interviews with doctors, nurses, and midwives as part of the second phase of the project to understand the contemporary experiences of registration.
Wishing you a very Happy New Year 2024 from the Making it to the Registers Team.
Marie, Priyasha, Nasreen, and Amrita
Professor Marie-Andrée Jacob, Dr Priyasha Saksena and Professor Nasreen Ali host project launch event
On Tuesday 28th March, Professor Marie-Andrée Jacob, Dr Priyasha Saksena, and Professor Nasreen Ali launched the project Making it to the Registers: Documenting Migrant Carers’ Experiences of Registration and Fitness to Practise at an event at the Leeds Playhouse. The project is a collaboration between the University of Leeds and the University of Bedfordshire and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Along with Professor Jacob, Dr Saksena, and Professor Ali, speakers at the launch included Dr Ramesh Mehta and Dr Indranil Chakravorty – representatives of our project partner British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) and Tabita Tariq, a qualified nurse and asylum seeker. Tabita has since received her refugee status.
The project will run for two years. For details of the launch see link here.
Dr Amrita Limbu joins the team as postdoctoral fellow
In June 2023, Dr Amrita Limbu joined the project as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Amrita’s research background centres on labour and migration and she is interested in analysis of migration, emotions, and transnational families.
Advisory Group Meeting
The project’s advisory group members came together for the first meeting held online on the 20th September 2023. The advisory group brings together individuals with research and professional expertise from the academic, health and third sectors.
The advisory group members include:
Dr Ramesh Mehta, British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin
Tabita Tariq, qualified nurse with refugee status in the UK, outreach experience via Refugee Council
Timothy Procter, Brotherton Special Collections
Fiona McCulloch-Exley, Leeds Playhouse
Professor Gurch Randhawa, University of Bedfordshire
Professor Douglas Haynes, University of California Irvine
Professor Roberta Bivins, University of Warwick
Professor William Gould, University of Leeds
Dr Sunil Daga, Leeds Teaching Hospitals
Professor Joan Loughrey, Queen’s University Belfast
Professor Trudie Roberts, University of Leeds
Professor Indranil Chakravorty, St. George’s Hospital London
Professor Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr Simon Popple, University of Leeds
Dr Sophiko Daraselia, University of Leeds
Professor Marie-Andrée Jacob and Dr Amrita Limbu present at the Professional Standards Authority Conference
On 14th November 2023, Professor Marie-Andrée Jacob and Dr Amrita Limbu presented at the Conference How can regulation research contribute to safer care for all? organised by the Professional Standards Authority and King’s Business School in London.
The presentation titled Differential registration and the professional healthcare workforce crisis: Overseas healthcare professionals in the UK drew on archival research and focused on admission of foreign healthcare professionals during the Second World War period and the immediate pre-and post-War period.
The conference was attended by different regulating bodies within the health sector, representatives from the NHS, and academics.
Publication
Jacob, Marie-Andrée and Saksena, Priyasha (2023) The Changing Natures of the Medical Register: Doctors, Precarity, and Crisis. Social & Legal Studies 32(5), 714-736. https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639231178878
Blogs
Jacob, Marie-Andrée (2023) Esther Simpson, pioneer and inspiration for Making it to the Registers, 7 August, https://makingregisters.leeds.ac.uk/blog-esther-simpson/
Saksena, Priyasha (2023) Austrian Doctors in the British Caribbean, 4 Sep, https://makingregisters.leeds.ac.uk/austrian-doctors-in-the-british-caribbean/
Jacob, Marie-Andrée, Saksena, Priyasha, and Limbu, Amrita (2023) Registration of Overseas-trained Healthcare Professionals in the UK. Sushruta Journal of Health Policy & Opinion 15(3), 21-22. https://doi.org/10.38192/15.3.12
Limbu, Amrita (2023) Gender, Migration, and Medical Registration in the UK, 5 December, https://makingregisters.leeds.ac.uk/gender-migration-and-medical-registration-in-the-uk/
Project Team’s Corner
Co-I Dr Priyasha Saksena published her new book Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia published by Oxford University Press, June 2023.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Amrita Limbu was awarded the Michael Beverley Innovation Fellowship 2023. The Michael Beverley Innovation Fellowship is an intensive development programme designed to support early career researchers advance their projects through innovative thinking, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and external partnerships.
PI Professor Marie-Andrée Jacob published an article ‘The Regulation of Apology In Healthcare: Learning from GMC V Dr Pandian 2023’ in Sushruta Journal of Health Policy & Opinion 15(3), 24-32 in October 2023. https://doi.org/10.38192/15.3.11
Dr Priyasha Saksena discussed her new book Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia at a book discussion event organised by the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context, Queen Mary University of London, 28 November 2023.
Co-I Professor Nasreen Ali will deliver outreach evening in January-February 2024. The Talk, Listen, Change (TLC) Workforce Research Programme aims to better understand how to get underrepresented groups into health and social care courses and careers. The programme of research and interventions prioritises voice and experience to enable the co-production of solutions.
One of the largest projects in the programme is the The Collaborative Targeted Outreach Programme (CTOP). The team have co-produced culturally relevant intervention, which uses an ethnographic approach to engaging with underrepresented groups from diverse backgrounds in the community setting to offer insights into the range of courses and career opportunities available in the fields of health and social care, and to break down stigma and misconceptions about health and social care roles. The goal is to empower underrepresented groups with the knowledge they need to aspire and make informed decisions about educational courses and professional careers. Professor Ali with her team will be delivering the outreach evening in Bedford, Central Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes during January-February 2024.
Share your stories
If you are an overseas-trained or qualified nurse, midwife, or doctor and currently living in the UK, we would love to hear from you. Whether you have registered in the UK or are preparing to register in the future, or has had an interest in registration, we invite you to an hour interview to share your experiences of nursing, midwifery, or medical registration in the UK. Please get in touch at [email protected].