Where to Find Private Practice Jobs in the UK (Beyond the NHS)

If you've searched for a private healthcare role recently, you'll know the problem: type in your profession and the results are overwhelmingly NHS. For clinicians who want private practice — more autonomy, longer appointments, often better pay — the roles can feel invisible. Here's where they actually are, and how to find them faster.

Why private roles are so hard to find

• General job boards optimise for volume, and that volume is NHS-weighted
• Recruiters default to NHS listings — sometimes even after you've said private only
• Specialist boards exist but are siloed by single discipline, so you end up registered on five different sites
• Many private practices still hire by word of mouth, so the role never reaches a public board at all

Where private practice roles actually are

1. 1Discipline-specific registers and boards (e.g. RCVS for vets, GOC for optometrists) — thorough but single-profession
2. 2LinkedIn — useful but cluttered and not role-specific
3. 3Private practice groups and clinic websites' own careers pages — accurate but you have to hunt them one by one
4. 4A dedicated private-practice board that covers every discipline in one place — the most efficient route

How to cut out the NHS noise

• Use boards that let you filter to private practice only — or are private-only by design
• Set up alerts by profession and region so new roles come to you
• Verify your registration up front — it signals quality and speeds up applications
• Apply quickly: in a candidate-short market, good private roles move fast

Why a verified, private-only board is different

The Practice Standard was built specifically to solve this. Every listing is private practice — zero NHS roles — across all 88 regulated professions and 12 UK regions. Every account is tied to a profession and registration, so it's built for registered professionals, not anonymous CV-spray. And it's always free for professionals to browse and apply.