Why are newly trained doctors not getting jobs and leaving the UK when we’re so short of doctors?

It’s due to non-sensical medical workforce planning. One of the NHS seems completely unable to communicate to the other part. There’s oversupply of medical students and foundation doctors, but not enough speciality training jobs.

It’s also partly due to increased overseas recruitment. The UK unlike the US/Australia doesn’t prioritise UK graduates for training positions. If you look at GP training this year and large amount are going to overseas graduates. If they will remain in the UK once they finish GP training remains to be seen.

This. You find out who the GPs are in your practice and you refuse to be seen by anybody but one of them. I appreciate it’s more difficult in hospitals but the problem is mainly focused in surgeries anyway.

One gave my dad some medication for a minor alignment that he wasn’t allowed to take under any circumstances with his long term complaint. Thankfully, we have a real doctor in the family who stopped him taking them pretty quickly.

It really is a disaster waiting to happen if this practice of using cheaper unqualified labour continues.

Junior doctors are very badly paid for their level of expertise. They used to get paid overtime. When the European Working Hours Directive came into force in the NHS that stopped. The overtime didn’t stop. You can’t go home if you are in a busy A&E dealing with patients and there is no one to replace you. But the overtime is not recorded and the pay stopped.

That's not quite correct. With the introduction of the 2002 junior doctors contract, a banding supplement was introduced which was a percentage of basic pay. This was dependent on the amount of hours worked and how antisocial they were, but in broad bands (40 -48 hrs, 48 - 56 hrs), so not 'overtime' . Overtime ceased in 2002 when UMTs were abolished. EWTD wasn't fully implemented for junior doctors until 2009.

You just insist your appt is with a doctor. I’ve done it many times after a PA misdiagnosed my elderly mum.

My friends son fifth year in medicine is part of the strike this week. It's not just about money btw, they're fighting for their career. He's accepted that he'll probably have to go abroad, his fiancée is in the same boat. He actually wants to be a GP she a consultant.

All of this. Medical workforce planning has been a disgrace for decades.

When John Reid was health secretary, a colleague raised the lack of planning with the DH and the BMA at a meeting I also attended. He pointed out that unless you plan from the top down, so know what service you want to deliver in x years, and by what grade of Dr and how many Drs that would take, then work backwards all the way to the number of medical students you'd need to deliver that service in x years' time, then you don't have a hope in hell of ever getting things right. The DH leaders shrugged their shoulders and said it was too difficult.

There have always been specialties that are oversubscribed, and conversely specialties where it's impossible to appoint to consultant posts because there aren't enough trainees on the specialist register to go round. Those specialties lacking enough trainees run their junior rotas with gaps/agency cover. That makes for a worse experience for those juniors in the specially, so the next cohort won't want to work in it. It's a vicious circle.

A third of medical students are from overseas anyway and never had any intention of living and working here for long. But they pay over £30K a year in tuition fees, so cash-strapped universities need them, even though it reduces places for homegrown students.

Junior doctors are very badly paid for their level of expertise. They used to get paid overtime. When the European Working Hours Directive came into force in the NHS that stopped. The overtime didn’t stop. You can’t go home if you are in a busy A&E dealing with patients and there is no one to replace you. But the overtime is not recorded and the pay stopped.

Australia, with its hybrid NHS-insurance system, has far smarter, better equipped hospitals paying medical professionals enough for them to get a mortgage to buy a house. 30 years ago in the U.K. a junior doctor would earn earn enough to have a good lifestyle, but that is no longer the case. Some of them work in war zone like conditions and their take home pay barely covers their rent and utility bills.

Not a doctor but other health care professional who leaving to go to Australia. She wants to travel, see the world and has the skills to get a visa ... the UK is seen to be dreary. But, has every intention of coming home once she has experience under her belt ...and if the price is right.

Young educated, skilled adults have so many moreoptions these days.

There is also a nonsensical cap on how many placements are allocated to training doctors, I think that was put in by the BMA. So that also needs removal/reversal. I guess the BMA doesn't like/want competition. I wouldn't want Starmer near anything, to be perfectly honest 😄 I'm trying hard to not involve myself in politics, but it's not easy.

NHS England and Health education merged recently but still don’t seem to be talking to each other. The NHS 15 year forward workforce plan calls for almost doubling of doctor and nurse undergraduate places. But there’s not information about where the money for jobs will come from once they have graduated. Doctor training is complex as part of their salary comes from the Trust who employ them and part from Health education as well as a fee from health education to cover the costs of their education. Until they are permanently employed as consultants they are training grades and require heavy supervision, portfolio work and teaching that consultants and others have to deliver and stuff to backfill when they are at training, this is what the fee covers (as well as OH support). The doctors in training also provide a lot of service work to the trust seeing patients on wards and clinics so it benefits everyone.

This is because of the growing practice of PAs.

Unless you have a boo-boo on your pinky, you must refuse to be seen by one to stop this growing practice.

They're undercut by cheaper foreign imports, mostly. Why spend money training people when you can just import a cheaper fully trained doctor from a country with similar training standards? That's how the government does things. Import, import, import.

The answer is cold hard cash or a lack of it and a lack of support.

@flapjackfairy that must be unheard of in nursing?

is the freeze because of the election ?

If we don't train our new doctors there will be no specialists. But there are not enough training places on speciality training so after foundation years you can now end up unemployed. While waiting lists keep increasing. It's bonkers. In 5 years, as consultants are retiring, there will be a very limited amount of staff to replace them. Because the NHS has the worst workforce planning in the world. 1,000 medical students did not immediately get a job after Uni this year, despite the NHS knowing for 5 years how many of them were needed. Nurses can't get jobs this year out of University too.

And yes, PAs are trying to replace doctors in some trusts, and are paid a lot more so it's not about money.

Add this to the ridiculous pay (£15.53 an hour after 5 years training and £100,000 in debt) and you have a bunch of very sad doctors. It was not like this when they applied 6-7 years ago. This government hate the NHS and doctors in particular. Wonder how Rishi's GP dad feels about there being 2,000 unemployed GPs.

one of our night carers for our disabled child is finishing her second year of training to become a nurse. She told me last week that non of this years graduating nurses can get a job in the NHS because there is a recruitment freeze at present due to lack of money. No bank staff can be employed either to plug the many gaps in a groaning system.
The graduating nurses have been told to get jobs in the private sector and come back to the NHS when there is money to recruit again. As if that's going to happen!
She said by the time she graduates next year she will have approx 80 000 in debt ( single parent) and no job ! She is lucky in that she can stay working as a carer full time in her existing job which is what she will do! So what is the point ? She may as well.have saved herself the 3 yrs of hard work and debt!.
It is madness!

They are absolutely 100% being replaced by PAs. My GP BIL who has been a locum for many years has had his shifts dramatically reduced because of the use of this cheap labour.

You cannot say this isn’t happening. I won’t be seen by a PA and until everybody stands up against this practice we will continue to see our junior drs leave in their thousands.

There’s not a shortage of gps either. Just ones who have a job to be available to see you. Lots of them can’t find work. Unbelievable but true. A gp friend told me and I saw this article on it the other week….https://amp.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/12/england-locum-gps-doctors-work-surgeries-british-medical-association

And it’s estimated that about 35% of Consultants in the NHS will retire in the next 5 years. Ticking time bomb…..