Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) are turning to recruiters to help them find emergency doctors abroad.

Recruiting doctors from overseas is not new, but it is a new task for the PCTs, which have taken over provision of out-of-hours medical advice from GP co-operatives.

British GPs’ contracts have now changed to allow them to have evenings and weekends off.

The East Anglian Ambulance Trust, which runs Anglia Medical Care, is one body that has taken on this new responsibility.

A spokesperson for its main agency, Medworld, told Recruiter that it remained to be seen whether shorter GP hours would mean more business because the new contracts had only just come into effect.

But there would be plenty of interest, especially from Germany: “They come over here for the money because [in Germany], doctors are very low paid.”