Where Brexit Hurts: The Nurses and Doctors Leaving London<br />Brexit advocates said leaving the European Union would allow the government to repatriate 350 million pounds<br />a week from Brussels — about $463 million at current exchange rates — and spend it on health care.<br />On June 24 last year, she said, “We all woke up in a different country.”<br />Seventeen months after Britain voted to leave the European Union, many Europeans are voting to leave Britain — with their feet.<br />In London, a city long sustained by European bankers, builders and baristas — “a place<br />that makes you dream,” Ms. Pardela said — the departures are beginning to hurt.<br />But recruiting nurses from the European Union had helped plug the gap — especially in London, where<br />the share of nurses from the Continent is about 14 percent, or twice the national average.<br />has consistently managed to produce health outcomes comparable to countries with vastly more resources — like France, which has a similar population<br />but more than twice the number of hospital beds — it is in large part because of the people, said Dr. Noël, who has worked in both systems.<br />As yet, there is no mass exodus back to the Continent — the number of European Union<br />staff in the health service even grew slightly in the year after the referendum.
