AIBU to be furious that there are no jobs for young doctors

[Needmoresleep]

Yes, you read it right!

At the end of their two foundation years (F1 & F2), young UK trained doctors are struggling to find work. They don’t want to go to Australia or NZ but for many this will be the only option. Seven or eight years study and work down the drain.
The UK supposedly has a shortage of doctors, so immigration rules have been amended to encourage overseas applicants. They then complete equally with those who are working in, or studied in the UK for both general entry level jobs (known informally as F3s) and for speciality training positions.

The average hard-working doctor does not stand much of a chance. Anecdotally even quite ordinary vacancies will attract hundreds if not thousands of on-line applications. The NHS does not keep statistics, but it appears that to keep numbers manageable many NHS Trusts will shut applications within a few hours. Tough for the junior doctor who is at work or sleeping off a night shift. The best from overseas will be very qualified with perhaps a decade of experience, and lots of additional bells and whistles, so it probably does not matter. They will score better so the chance of an interview for a young doctor who needs to build their own experience will be vanishingly low.

The expansion of medical school places, and allocation of some of these traditional entry level roles to Physician Associates is only exacerbating the problem.

Training positions are even more competitive. The Government has introduced a number of incentives to encourage applicants from overseas: exemptions from exams, guarantees on training and promises for British citizenship. Medical school places have been expanding without a parallel increase in training opportunities so bottlenecks would have happened anyway. In 2021 36% of new trainees were from medical schools outside the UK. In 2023 it was 41.5%. This trend is expected to be continuing, even accelerating.

A group of us have been on the higher education board since our DC were applying for medical school. They are now F2s spread across the country, working long hours for relatively little pay but enjoying the contribution they are making. None of them expect to get either a short term contract or a training position, so are applying to Australia or accepting that they will be reliant on zero hours NHS bank work covering staff absences.
As taxpayers we should be concerned that we are paying for medical schools, yet the NHS is not supporting their graduates into employment. We might also question why we are not giving priority to those already working in the NHS for the limited training slots. Doctors from elsewhere may be very good, but a significant proportion are then likely to leave to return home or to take up well paid private consultancy posts in either their home countries or in medical hubs like Dubai or Singapore.

Keir Starmer has said he will review sectors seeking labour from abroad to ensure that applications for the relevant visa routes, whether it’s the skilled worker route or the shortage occupation list will be balanced with expectations on training people here in our country. Wes Streeting seems to be refusing to answer questions on the topic. Whilst last week the BMA finally issued the following statement, albeit limited to training:
https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/bma-statement-on-speciality-training-application-bottlenecks

Any action will be too late for our DC. When they applied for medicine they did not realise that it would mean having to leave the country. The hope has to be that a way is found to retain those that follow and to allow our impressive young people to be able to return.

Not sure if young doctors are aware - it is very difficult to get a training post in Australia as a foreign graduate.

Totally agree with this. It is a bizarre situation. I honestly had no idea, not having any involvement with medics other than as a patient.

It is worse than just our home trained doctors not getting jobs. My F3+ DS works with a lot of these new overseas trained doctors, he says that some of them are utterly incompetent, unable to diagnose the most basic conditions, or meet the medical needs of patients, seriously lacking practical hands on experience despite being qualified on paper.

They probably prioritise their own graduates like everywhere else in the world with the exception of the UK

My understanding is that a lot of UK medical graduates heading to Australia are doing it to get a job at all rather than speciality training.

Yes, they just want a job. Any job as a doctor. In the UK many of them are facing unemployment in August, so it's Australia or drive an Uber.

Suspect it's poor forward planning.

Maybe there needs to be a limiting of the expansion of overseas academies that fasttrack overseas applicants. The academies appear to be set up by lobbyists (for IMG recruitment) who work within the NHS. Not sure if anyone can shed light on how this works? How much money allocated to the NHS is user for this purpose as it is out of step with what's needed for our UK based applicants?

Parachuting foreign applicants into roles needed by UK applicants at a time like this is wrong?

What are the changes in recruitment in the last 18 months?

mumsneedwine I have both a corporate solicitor child and a junior doctor child. I couldn't call it between the two. Both work extremely hard. They aren't my only children. And I've certainly had to listen after very difficult incidents/ deaths at work with the doctor child. I have to say I nevertheless don't know the details about these exams they need to do etc. Just that they need to do them, and indeed have done them (just).

@Wooleys you've never heard of the MSRA ? Maybe your resident doctor child (they are not junior) is in a speciality that doesn't use it.
But they will have heard of it, and will have many friends who have sat it.

However if they got a training number before 2024 you'll may be realise how things have changed. Competition is now 40:1 in some specialities. Even IMT, which used to be fairly unpopular was 11:1 last year. This year is higher. And candidates who would easily have got an interview in previous years, because they've worked hard to get great portfolios, have not got anything this year.

It's only going to get worse. Unless we give priority to the graduates we've trained, regardless of their country of origin.

What people don't seem to understand when they talk about other degrees is the whole gambit of hurdles these DC have to jump over just to get into med school. It's not a case of just getting good GSCEs and A-Levels and filling in a UCAT form, like most degrees. There are many other hoops. Then there's the duration of the course, all the placements prohibiting part time work once you get into the meat of it, and all the debt from the sheer length of the course. The reward - gruelling F1 &F2 years and then, well nothing really. It's so wrong on so many different levels.

100% this.

I have vaguely heard of it and I know the DC had to do a SJT and put together a file showing they'd intercalated, written a paper etc but I'm a bit foggy about the specifics. I mostly know that DC had to do exams, have an interview, get ranked etc.

come back to me when you've tried to console your own child after a 13 hour shift where they've had to see things that most people would not want to even know about. Oh and after that they were supposed to do some studying

My DC didn't work at the end of a shift, that would be mad. They would have slept and worked in their rostered time off.

It's been tougher but no tougher than it has been for their siblings.

I think unless you have experience of the NHS it is difficult to make judgement ,why compare to other jobs/careers?
As a tax payer you have contributed to a very expensive degree and training that is totally specific to the NHS .
We need to nurture UK graduates as a priority what on earth was the point in creating new medical schools in the UK and expanding places otherwise?

DC's debt is from four years so the same as any STEM courses. DC worked through their course. I think possibly that helped them manage time to study alongside F1 and F2 work.

I had no idea if this issue till my DD’s BF (a junior doctor) explained it to me. It’s a scandal!

A friend of mine was ‘managed out’ of her job as a radiographer to make way for a younger gentleman from overseas. Ageist, racist and sexist.
Remember, Diversity is our strength! Got to keep these DEI schemes going!

Yes, I absolutely agree. And it's why DD is already pulling in as many extra qualifications as possible. Fortunately she already speaks fluent French but is expanding by studying Business French too. And she's adding in extra exams so she can charter in 2 years rather than three. Plus, she's already lining up an MBA (which is fully funded thankfully). But it is absolutely brutal and I had no idea she would be expected to basically sign her life away like this. I worry about her burning out but she's incredibly focused, she has to be.

I'm a dyed in the wool cynic but I'm wondering how much it costs to train a medical student as compared to how much the government gets back in student loans. I haven't a clue about what the shortfall is, I just know that I've heard a lot of politicians pat themselves on the back for the increase in the number of medical students, strongly implying that this will solve all the waiting list issues.

Yanbu

I'm a resident doctor, and of all the F2s in my hospital (circa 40), not a single one has secured a training post. That's right: 0/40 is continuing training in the NHS.

Some are going to New Zealand/Australia, some are leaving medicine, some are planning to give Botox and fillers instead of clinical practice, some are trying to find a staff grade job.

We had one staff grade job in our department and they closed it shortly after advertising as there were already over 800 applicants. For a perfectly normal job.

It's a travesty how resident doctors are being treated, and poor workforce planning as well as being costly (due to needing increased locums due to a shortage of trainees, despite many qualified candidates).

I read average student loan debt 100k and interest paid back 150k. Not sure if correct but my two DC who are junior doctors owe around 100k each and are charged interest on that amount.

I hope this thread gets picked up by the press ,there are a few changes the government could make that would cost them nothing and improve moral ,this is definitely one of them .

Hope all goes well for her. Scary times! Let's hope these issues are fixed asap so that those that had no say in Brexit don't have to suffer from a failure of planning for it.

The fifth year bursary isn't enough to cover the costs. I think things have changed since your older DS's time at med school.

GB News - Patrick Christie.

This is disgusting OP. We shouldn't be bringing in people from other countries if we have the trained people here.

Not had time to read the full thread yet.

In the mid-2000s, MMC forced many of us to apply for jobs abroad. There were simply no training jobs for after the Foundation Years. Very few non-training jobs either, and neither of us could secure one. When working in Australia, DH and I used most of our annual leave to fly back for interviews, separately - there was no option for online interviews back then. We each flew back twice, for a couple of days at a time. He secured an ST3 post. I did not. I eventually managed to find a Staff Grade post, though not close to where he worked. We earned a decent salary in Australia, but not much more than back home. Neither of us had much of a life for those first few years. If you wanted a training post, you needed the exams. It was exhausting, especially when you were working around 100 hours a week, but (just about) bearable as it was time-limited.

DH and I ultimately came back to the UK. I don’t envy juniors applying these days either. Sympathies to those currently going through it.