To resent doctors who leave the profession?

[Prrambulate]

IN PARTICULAR, to take up lucrative management consultancy roles at the likes of McKinsey. I know three doctors among my uni cohort who have left the profession in the early-mid 30s, very close to or having trained at consultancy level for specialisms like ophthalmology, orthopaedics. It seems to be happening more often but that could just be my perception.

It’s frustrating because medical places are significantly capped in the UK, getting a place on a course is difficult, and training these doctors is costly. And then just to lose these qualified doctors at a time of dire need in the NHS is kind of maddening.

All the male GPs I know are part time. Doing the job (GP) full time is frankly not feasible. Part-time for doctors is the same as full time in any other job in the majority of cases.

Female part-time NHS consultant here. However hard you work, more and more sick patients just keep coming. It's just knackering. It doesn't make you feel like you're making anyone better, which is what we came into the profession to do. The only way to make people better is to make their lives better, to improve the living standards and health behaviours of as many people as possible in this country. By the time they get to a doctor, there's only so much we can do.

I'd love to leave but I support my family as main breadwinner, so main aim is now retirement at 60. It's a job like any other, we aren't special humans, it's just a very highly and specifically skilled job. If the country values those skills, it should pay properly for them. I'm struggling to stay afloat financially with a very modest lifestyle, but I'd rather eat my head than go full-time.

If you no longer want to be a doctor, then it really isn’t a job you can keep doing half heartedly. It’s all or nothing. You can’t keep going.

I don't think you can have the first idea of how utterly diabolical it is to be a doctor in the UK.

The NHS is broken - and it is breaking doctors.

Doctors are leaving the NHS to work for functional organisations - where they are treated and paid properly - be that corporate jobs or Australia.

Don't blame the doctors, blame 'The NHS' for failing to retain these highly intelligent, well-training people.

Let me be clear.

The NHS is a toxic, cult like organisation that creates loyalty amongst staff out of shared trauma. You work within moderately large teams, and over the weeks, months, years you all get to know one another pretty well.

You see and do unspeakable things together. Stuff you can’t tell your partner. Stuff you can’t put on a forum like this. Stuff that if I typed it, you would think I had invented - but other medics and HCP would know was true.

The team you work with are not really your friends - you are trauma bonded. So, in answer to your question - when someone gets out of the cult and has an opportunity to make a decent living, pay off tens of thousands of pounds of debt and maybe have a family life that doesn’t revolve around staff shortages and lack of funding - and you don’t like that?

yea, YABU.

The public health system is losing staff, they are leaving due to ill treatment, stress, burn out, bullying, over worked, over crowded Ed’s, never ending waiting lists etc….
Take your anger out on government and the system, not the doctors who leave due to these reasons.
If the health system was fit for purpose, staff would stay

I don't blame any doctor for leaving the NHS. They are treated dreadfully. I am sure no one who leaves takes the decision lightly.

I’m a FT NHS consultant as is DH and we qual 30 years ago. We’ve never considered leaving - we worked in the Blair/Brown years, had choice and control our career choices and good pay progression. The NHS and medical training is a whole different kettle of fish now. My youngest DD has a place for medicine this year A level grades allowing and I’ve not put her off as I still love medicine
but current issues I didn’t have to deal with include :
1 student debt
2 poor pay ( in 1993 my first take home pay was £1400 per month. My son in law got £2100 25 years later. I bought my first house for £67k in a great area. Same house about 280 k when last sold ) he’s nowhere near saving a deposit and having to work endless locum shifts to save up
3 The Tories have run down the NHS in so many ways ranging from cancelling public health / prioritising food companies leading to the catastrophic demands due to obesity related illness. Underinvestment Poor management, poor IT. Outsourcing of basic functions at vast cost. Strikes they cause then won’t settle. Cancelling mental health services for staff. Then the policies of austerity and poverty/housing lead to a vicious circle of increased demand with problems that cannot be fixed.
4 junior doctors - no control over where you train - most programmes you apply for are national and you do not get choice.
medical couples often separated.
5 virtually everyone is forced to go part time ( usually 80%) just to avoid burn out
6 poor medical workforce planning - believe it or not there are more medical graduates then training posts now by
some way. More qualified GPs than jobs for them ( despite demands on GP).
7 social care - there is not one doctor who’s working life is not impacted by this every day. We can’t get patients the care they need, can’t discharge, see revolving door of admissions due to social care breakdown. it wears you down.
8 not being able to deliver the care you want and work safely. I have had to change jobs a couple of times when the work I did got outsourced. My GMC registration is all I have and I have to practice safely. Sometimes that means leaving a job.
And finally some people make a choice at 17 that is the wrong choice. Some get pushed into medicine. There will always be a certain number of doctors who give up medicine but in my peers it is pretty rare. Most people who go to Aus/ NZ for a year or two came back. But it’s increasingly attractive to stay there

I think the NHS should tackle systemic waste to raise salaries or fully fund indentured degrees.

And build care homes for the armies of citizens who can’t cope.

But every government is too scared. Doesn’t help, does it.

I don’t feel this way about dentistry, but then their NHS contract is truly bizarre and completely unworkable. The dentist does an exam and identifies what work needs doing. That exam and any work identified becomes a single course of treatment. And one course of treatment gets one payment, regardless of how many appointments are required. A patient who is identified as needing 1 filling, so only 1 treatment appointment, earns their dentist the same as someone who is identified as needing 3 extractions, 2 root canals and 10 fillings - potentially 8-12 appointments.

But what are you suggesting is the answer here?

Not letting women study medicine in case they bag a rich husband?

Waiving student fees if you work in the nhs for 2+ years (I’d be in favour of that but it still doesn’t stop the rich husband scenario).

I’m assuming your SIL didn’t work because of childcare? Or another reason? If childcare then we need to normalise dads also taking childcare leave.

the nhs when I qualified and nhsright now are like two different planets

I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition in my final year and so have experienced the nhs both as a clinician and as a patient.

so many of my graduating class have moved to aus/Nz etc. it's ridiculous but I cannot blame them at all.

doctors are all overwhelmingly frustrated. I cannot blame anyone who chooses to leave.

I vote YABU.

Circumstances change and people have the right to do whatever job it is they want to. Or not.

The reason why they're leaving needs to be addressed. I don't think it's right that doctors, or any professional, should be forced to put their job before their own needs or that or their families. Not under any circumstances...it's that thinking that has probably contributed to the situation we're in now!

This. Exactly what I was going to say.

I don't resent anyone looking after themselves and doing what is best for them. I am angry that the Government expects them to work such ridiculous hours so they get to the state that they want to leave.

Same as teaching, being a paramedic, nursing shifts of 12 hours and so forth.

Full time female consultant here - technically far more than full time covering extra lists! No I don’t resent anyone who leaves. I resent the stress of doctors in training, the awful conditions in so many trusts, the lack of humanity in parts of the NHS, the fact I cannot afford to buy near the hospital I work at (and have to be within 30 minutes of when oncall). I resent that.

For the first time this year the new graduates have NO say in where their jobs will be.

a random allocation to any part of the UK - no matter how smart, how committed or how much they are settled.

They are to be uprooted and fucked about with to some part of the Uk - London graduate thrown to Northern Ireland whilst the NI mum of two has to go to Somerset with no family connections.

Thats how little the nhs thinks of new junior doctors.
and they had no idea until last year that this would happen.

it’s a disgrace how we treat our doctors here.

I fully embrace as many fucking off elsehwere as possible

GP here .. my “part time” job is 40 hrs per week… that doesn’t include keeping up to date, journal reading, peer group meetings, paying to attend conferences, being available after hrs for palliative care patients.
If I worked full time then I would quickly become incredibly unwell myself.
I have been a doctor for 30 plus yrs.
Women in general practice do the emotional work in medicine… mental health issues, gynae issues. These take time and do not fit into the standard 15 min consult. They are also the things that are facing much reduced service
at secondary care level so I absolutely have limited ability to offer people what they need .. it’s dreadful.
I also feel that as medicine has become more feminised that it has become more open to attacks by politicians about work-shy GP’s and blamed for issues that are due to funding by central government. It has worked because often the amount anger here directed at GP’s is huge!
I love my job…it’s an honour and a privilege.. but it’s very very hard.

I’m not a doctor but a dentist. I chose dentistry over medicine because it was 9-5 mostly, and easy to fit, as a well paid part time job, around having a family.
I retired from the NHS recently but work one day a week privately.

It was pretty much my life plan to be in a position to retire around 60, however I didn’t really plan on owning my own practice which sort of landed on my lap. Running a business on top of practicing dentistry was more than a full time job.

Many GPs, who are partners, may not be working full time clinically but the exponential increase in red tape and tick boxing means that overall they probably work more than 40hrs a week.
GPs do a lot of referrals, all are now electronic and from experience take far longer than writing or dictating an old fashioned referral letter.
Processing the vast number of test results and signing off on them can’t be done by admin staff. Add to that the obligatory CPD and of course the wonderful CQC which involves a massive amount of continuous reviewing and updating.

It’s no surprise that young doctors witnessing the struggle their older colleagues suffer results in a real crisis and often a total change in direction.

I love my job but the threat of litigation hangs heavy and a simple case can take years to resolve even when there is no case to answer. Patients are too eager to blame anyone but themselves for their poor health,despite years of carefully explaining the consequences of their lifestyle. I have physically banged my head against the wall of my surgery on a number of occasions after a patient has left because, having tried every which way, they continue to ignore advice.

You should resent the cap on university places. It’s madness!!! The government should have thought about increasing numbers (with finding professors and all extra teaching facilities) years ago

same with vets and dentists and nurses, it’s insane, especially with the squeeze on immigration

so your beef should be with the idiotic government instead

I left, and I don't give a toss what you think of me.

My wellbeing is more important than any allegiance I have to the NHS.

If it's an indicator of how shit the NHS is, I took a 50% paycut in order to get out and retrain.

Suicide rates among NHS employees are very high. People aren't just leaving for profit. They are desperate for any way out, even to that degree.

I think it's a futile stance. You could say the same about the thousands that leave the other professional degrees each year without completing but quite often people just can't hack the NHS. I had 15 years in it as a senior nurse now work elsewhere. I got weary of spending my precious holidays ill in bed with stress.

Consultancy stuff for people who have fucked over our profession makes me angry. People leaving the profession or the country generally is a reflection of the conditions of the workplace

I don't blame anyone for leaving any profession if they can get a better deal elsewhere.

We're highly qualified professionals and left. As a result our income has improved even though I'm working less, our personal health has greatly improved and our lifestyle is so much better.

Anyone would change for those things so why should doctors or anyone else be any different? Be competitive or it's going to happen.

Well, that's harsh. Do you not agree with the concept of free choice?
Granted, time, effort and money has been invested in them. But not as much as the time, effort and money the person themselves pay personalky anf financially, to get there.
Given the abuse they get from paatients, non-compliance, their inability to suggest a person loses some weight and stop smoking before surgery because 'don't interfere with my human rights', then have to deal with poorer outcomes, etc, etc.
I could go on, but as you well know, OP, there are a million reasons to sod-off out of medicine. Not everyone feels they have to drain their life away for 40 years in a job they no longer like and is thankless.
Would you come on here if you observed those who work in equally important but low-paid jobs such as cleaners, bin-collectors, traffic wardens, moaning that they are leaving to do other jobs!
I suspect you are jealous that those who have left are having a life before they die.