Newly trained doctors-you need to know this

Because it will take a very long for our country to come to its senses and recover and until that time this behaviour will be considered acceptable and even laudable in some quarters.

Unemployed doctor here! I wouldn’t be able to get a job if I tried - not trying at this stage in life, at home with SEN child and baby. But mad to think patients wait so long in A&E or on the wards to be seen and I have all this knowledge and experience (paid for in part by the public) but hospitals just don’t have enough job positions. DH works in anaesthetics and ICU and PRAYING he is able to get a consultant job when he finishes his training in a couple of years. Otherwise no idea what we’ll do.

Yanbu.

It is a travesty that UK medical graduates are being trained, to become unemployed afterwards. It's a major failure of workforce planning. Either we need these doctors, and therefore there are training programme places for them, or we do not need them, and therefore we should not be training them. Training doctors at huge cost, only for them to have to leave the UK to get a job, is in no ones interest.

UK medical graduates should be prioritised over international medical graduates, and there should be sufficient training posts available for UK graduates.

Just 5 years ago, I accompany my nan to A&E and hear, on the other side of the curtain, a posh English junior doctor asking an elderly man 'where did you fall?' three times. After receiving the same answer three times, a nurse came to the doctor's rescue - 'which part of your body came into contact with the pavement first'. Language barrier, eh?

I don't know how this all slid to a linguistic discussion, but language ability or absence thereof aside, surely if we pay to train them, we should benefit from their training - i.e. we should not let them leave until they pay back in kind (by working in the NHS) for a number of years and we should certainly prioritise locally trained (of whatever colour and language ability) over imports. Would it not be similar to training the best athletes paid by the public purse to let them compete against us under different flags? It just seems mad.

because not all uk trained doctors are up to the job and would you rather have a brilliant overseas doc trained or a sub par uk one just because they trained here. Open competition

medicine ahs always been competitive, overseas doctors ahve always come over ans still will - i

To be honest back in the mid 90s, I came across a not insignificant number of white British midwives and a white British HV who were not capable of recording information correctly, sometimes writing down the opppsite of my wishes arising from a discussion we had had. In one case a midwife failed three times to order the correct blood test relating to an underlyimg chronic, autoimmune health condition. Clearly their communication skills in their native language were poor, and yet they must have passed exams.

for me its not racism but i do know what a slog its is to get into med school and then go through the years of hard work to not get a training place! nothing to do with immigration etc. but we do need to ensure that kids can see a future for themselves

But, in 2023, UK graduates were offered 59 per cent of training posts, versus 41 per cent for IMGs – equal to their proportion in the workforce at the time.

Why is it OK to discriminate against UK graduates like this? Why aren’t they getting 100% of training posts?

Got you.

Is there any data for how many overseas F2s are being recruited to UK training posts ?

Is it maybe a case of training hospitals being attracted by higher fees they can charge overseas folk, similar to universities ?

Ahh. Found this:

Specialty training squeeze (bma.org.uk)

From that: "The unique number of IMGs applying to specialty training doubled between 2023 and 2025 (from 10,402 to 20,803), whereas the number of UK medical graduates increased by 33 per cent (9,283 to 12,305). But, in 2023, UK graduates were offered 59 per cent of training posts, versus 41 per cent for IMGs – equal to their proportion in the workforce at the time."

Article goes on to split up the numbers by specialty.

Complex for sure.

So you are saying there is a bottle neck because we don’t have enough training places to train all the overseas doctors who want to come here as well as our own FY2 doctors? Why should we offer to train any overseas doctor who wants that?

In terms of getting points for things like research; research in many other countries is carried out by technicians and only ‘led’ by the researcher. They don’t do the grunt work, gather results, or even do the first write-up. They may give input to the protocol, possibly some oversight, and some adjustments to the manuscript. In the UK a junior doctor (or other researcher) carrying out research is expected to do the actual research work and drafting too. In the UK technicians are just there to ensure the labs are run efficiently, not do the experiments. I’ve seen a good number of overseas researchers get given short shrift by university technicians when they try to treat them as they would a technician in their own country. It is also too often apparent, just how much of the researchers research skills were actually down to those technicians. Not that you would know that from the papers they cite.

I don’t think anyone is saying that all medical staff from overseas are not as good as those trained here, there will be different levels of competence throughout both groups. However, language barriers and cultural differences can create further risks, even if completely competent in all other areas.

My DS is a first year med student and I genuinely worry about the opportunities available to him in years to come after racking up thousands in debt, and personally believe that uk jobs should be filled by the people the uk taxpayers have invested in training, until the relevant skills available in that pool are exhausted.

Honestly, I think your experience is very unusual. Most people even on this thread have reported a different experience. That seems to apply to both the HCPs and the patients. But regardless of this, surely the chief point is that it makes no sense in any way to train UK doctors and then force a large percentage of them to leave to gain employment at the same time as pilfering doctors from other countries who also need doctors and nurses.

My DS finished his foundation training and took a year out and went to Oz. Applying for training posts here and is finding it very competitive plus as there aren’t enough training posts lots of drs are now locuming so there aren’t many locum opportunities either. He is now thinking about staying and training in Oz. It’s terrible that this is the situation that they are finding themselves in.

edit : sp

So you are arguing that it is better to exploit workers from other countries rather than be forced to improve conditions for carers in order to attract UK workers into this profession?

Only 7.5% of medical students are international students.

I can honestly say that in the last five or so years maybe longer time flies when your having fun I rarely if ever come into contact with any HCPs who can’t speak “good English”. I definitely have in the past but not now. Maybe I’m in a minority maybe it’s where I live but I do meet a lots of HCPs from abroad but I simply don’t see poor language skills anymore.
I do see HCPs from abroad who lack knowledge and skills but I also see this from HCPs who trained in the UK.

A thousand times this. An elderly relative is currently in hospital and while most of the doctors are either British have a good standard of English, I cannot say the same for the other staff on the ward. My relative doesn't have any problems with her speech or hearing but I frequently have to intervene because either she can't understand the member of staff or the person has misunderstood what she has said to them.

Which bit?

Hard, not head!

It would be head for anyone with extensive experience of working in the NHS to disagree with this statement.

It's a crazy situation. I struggle to think how anyone could think that it is a good thing to train many thousands of doctors in the UK at taxpayer's expense for many of them to then leave and work abroad for years, possibly permanently. Meanwhile, the UK steal the medical professionals from other, poorer countries.
I guess, the UK gov. like it because it keeps the wages down. However, I think thngs have got to the point where people are becoming far more vocal in their complaints on this and many, many other matters.

Wrt the point about foreign doctors not speaking good English, it's not racist to say that this is true in some circumstances. Some foreigners speak far better English than British educated people, others simply don't have good enough English, communication skills or bedside manner to be able to explain complex health issues well to patients.

Fair point. I apologize.

I should learn to be more inclusive and understanding. More accepting of the entire realm of diversity. I should not single any group out and potentially demonize them by using not nice words.

Sorry.

Is anyone generalising that all overseas staff can’t speak good enough English, or are they saying that some don’t.

Do you disagree that some don’t?

Yet again, I didn’t generalise ‘all’. We would all make more progress in this conversation if we didn’t have regular accusations of saying things that aren’t being said. Sometimes that tactic is used to deflect from the issues.