Newly trained doctors-you need to know this

So many posters are right, but when people write about their concerns about Third World doctors and lack of training/corruption there, we need to look closer to home. In the early 1990s prior to EU membership Romania/Bulgaria and the Baltic States it was possible to obtain medical degrees by the following:

• pay the tutor directly to pass you
• pay your mate to sit your exam for you
• just buy a diploma (literally pay money to the institution to sell you a diploma) - i.e. you register, show up a few times, don't attend regularly, pay full fees and you get a diploma (full-fee paying students subsidise non-fee paying ones)

F1 and F2 doctors have protected jobs for 2 years as they are still in training. They join a 2 year foundation programme with 6 rotations. Once F2 is finished then the problems start as too few jobs for resident doctors and it’s a disgrace

I feel like I’m missing something. What’s the benefit of employing people from say, Nigeria, if there are people here who want the jobs? Surely we don’t pay them less? And if they need sponsoring, that must cost us?

is it the lack of training spaces?

Yup. Seems to me the issue is under funding of training hospital places. Poor long term planning/ funding.

But the OP unfortunately mixed up their data sets, leading to the gammons to conclude what gammons always conclude.

I think this is maybe a good example of why it is so important to present data on a like for like basis. To avoid potentially wrong conclusions being made.

Anecdotally, the conflation issue is something seen on likes of GB news and Fox on a fairly regular basis.

It’s simply bonkers we don’t.

Why can’t we instil this now and offer golden handshakes to experienced uk staff to stay on past retirement and oversea training lower qualified UK staff until we catch up.

so write to your mp's

I think basically every other country in the world gives priority to their own medical graduates. So it certainly is possible.

You can’t stop people moving about.

How is it not a problem with overseas recruitment?

We have 13000 training places. 12000 applications from UK grads and another 20000 from overseas.

Australia rather sensibly give priority to their own trainees. Overseas candidates get anything that can't be filled.

It’s not racist to say that if tax payers pay to train doctors (or any other profession for that matter), those tax payers should benefit from the training they’ve paid for.

it’s also not racist to be concerned for other countries who pay to train doctors, and for those doctors to then emigrate to another another country to work (in this case the U.K.)

Moving away from a corrupt country to further your career is admirable though surely? I don't think a psychiatric nurse is any more likely to be 'corrupt' if they happened to be born in Nigeria.

It's true that nearly all the ones I had were from there or a couple from Zimbabwe. I was in for five weeks with RMN 1:1 so that's a lot of nurses. They were all bank nurses as I wasn't in a psych ward.

All good, professional. Some more friendly and outgoing than others. But I didn't have suspicions their country of origin was affecting their honesty.

Agree with this. My DH in hospital a few years ago was trying to explain to a nurse that there was no.point in her trying to take blood from a certain vein. It just wouldn't work. He was having blood taken 3 or 4 times a day and knew this for definite, and knew what vein could be used. She wandered off and wrote in his notes that he was refusing blood tests. He missed that blood test completely and it wasn't until a second nurse queried it hours later that the issue was resolved The first nurse simply didn't understand him, nor he her. English was definitely not her first language, and in this instance led to my DH's care being compromised.

Thanks for the info.

So the OP post at the top of the thread is misleading. The Drs recruited overseas are full trained and specialised, It is not a case of UK trained Drs can't get jobs because of others being brought in.

It's underfunding of training positions at teaching hospitals. And given the time taken for students to go through med school, this is an underfunding problem/poor planning that started years ago.

I can see the issue, but it appears not to be an issue caused by overseas recruiting.

In manufacturing terms, it's an unbalanced production line. In manufacturing, the usual solution for such a scenario is to change the process to a pull system, rather than a push, than it is at the moment.

And this makes me wonder about the OP, and others, saying F2s and F3s are considering moving abroad to complete their training. Australia is mentioned above.

But if Australia does have a more balanced production line, with all input and outputs numbers of the various phases alligned, would a sudden influx of foreign educated F2 and F3's not knock their process out of kilter ? Where UK F2s would potentially knock Australian F2s off their own process ?

I'm a consultant. My (brilliant) FY2 is leaving the country. She is someone who went "straight through" training. Uni at 18, various awards and prizes at medical school. Great reports from FY1 and has been a great trainee in my department. Reliable, sensible, patients really like her.

But the competition ratios to get into core training are wild, and because of the standardised process she simply won't get enough points on the form. She's 24. So no she hasn't had the chance to get a PhD, complete a RCT etc etc. She won't get enough points on the generic application form. She's competing against people who are already practicing at a senior level abroad who are willing to do these jobs. It doesn't feel fair as core training, in my view, is meant to be designed to train up senior doctors not as a step down for existing consultants.

I think if we went back to more local recruitment with proper interviewing rather than generic forms some of this could be mitigated. I say this as someone who works with lots of excellent colleagues from abroad. I don't think it's discrimination to prioritise candidates who have trained locally. I'd rather work with someone from abroad who had been fully trained from Yr 1 of medical school in the UK, rather than a brit who had trained entirely abroad.

Also as above the qualifications as frequently faked or purchased by various means.

Well this thread went gammon very fast. All the doctors I work with from overseas have excellent English and the patients love them.

I know, our government(s) are rubbish.

Some misconceptions here so a brief summary
of the way it works in the UK:

1. You study 5 years at med school to qualify as doctor (or 6 years if you do an extra degree intercalation). The govt has been gradually increasing numbers of places at med schools.
2. After graduating you work 2 years as foundation doctor in which you rotate around various hospital jobs. You are a fully qualified doctor but still learning as you are for the rest of your career. Foundation places are allocated by lottery (literally). For the past couple of years the number of foundation places has not correlated to the number of foundation doctors causing some immense stress but this isn't the main problem referred to here.
3. After working 2 foundation years doctors then have to apply for their next job. A job is not an automatic given at this stage (fair enough). It could be a core training job if you want to be a medicine type doctor, surgical training, or GP training. Qualified doctors from other countries are also eligible to apply for these jobs.

Not only is it a crazy waste of UK tax payers money to train doctors that we then don't employ. It is massively demoralising for UK trained doctors to feel that they are being put on the scrap heap and undervalued after working incredibly hard in pretty difficult NHS conditions.
THIS is why doctors are striking..

It's across the entirety of the NHS

There are no jobs for GPs either - ridiculous amounts of GP unemployment and underempolyment.
Consultants that have just cct'd are also struggling to find work
When people leave or retire they are not replaced as there is a hiring freeze in some trusts.

In my experience:
This means that 2 week waits are being seen in 4 weeks
Urgent appointments are seen at 8 months - year later. When I first qualified max was 2 months.
Routine hospital appointments take up to 18 months
Skin cancer surgery 9 month wait.
Hernia repairs patients are waiting 2 years. Longer in most cases
Joint replacements 2-3 years.
ADHD assessments for adults 3-5 years

What a great system to work in and what care we are delivering.....not

And yes I do worry about the impact this has on the Reform vote.

The Tories caused this. Labour are doing SFA and would rather throw vulnerable patients and med/ nursing students under the bus than prioritise UK trained staff. So that leaves reform looking increasingly attractive for many( not me) which is kind of ironic considering they want to privatise the NHS. .

I think people forget that English as spoken in many ‘English speaking’ countries has diverged quite a bit from English spoken here. It isn’t just an accent, it is a different way of pronounciation, sometimes a creole or pidgin (a mix of languages). So when they say they speak English they don’t actually speak the same language as us.

In what way? There are more training places than UK medical graduates.

The problem is the number of overseas candidates.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wes-streeting-government-bma-general-medical-council-whitehall-b2774826.html

”I believe that anyone who has the guts to step up to attempt to help another human needs to be supported, no matter where they are from”

I dont!

Are you really that naive to think all of those coming from abroad to work in MH and the care sector are doing it for altruistic reasons? Those of us with vulnerable family members using the sectors can see this is very much not the case.

Also there are many young UK people
wanting to train to be nurses but they actually want a job at the end of it. The lack of jobs is the issue.

Once again, Shipman isn’t relevant. No-one is saying that all doctors who speak perfect idiomatic British English are good. That is trivially obviously untrue.

I am specifically talking about risks to patient safety where doctors and patients can’t understand each other.

Have you looked to see what IELTS level is considered adequate for doctors who do not speak English as their first language? Do you think that is a safe level?

There was no money due to the debts that arose via PFI so the Blair Government could imply there was lots of money by making everything look shiny and new. It's a much older problem than post 2010 and has its roots as far back as 1947 when the UK implemented the wrong system. A system the GPs were diametrically opposed tonfor all the right reasons but came on board because their mouths were stuffed with gold not because they had the best interests of the people at heart.