AIBU to be angry that Government policy means young doctors, nurses and other HCPs cannot find jobs

[Needmoresleep]

Unbelievable but true.

Doctors, nurses and other health care professionals now have to compete for jobs and training with applicants from across the world. No priority is given to those already in the country.

Even ordinary entry level jobs can attract hundreds of applicants within a few hours. Newly qualified doctors and nurses need that first job to get the experience that overseas applicants will be able to offer.

In 2021 immigration law was changed and something called the Resident Market Labour Test was dropped for health and care workers. It means that the UK may be the only country not to prioritise those already in the country.

The previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5267503-aibu-to-be-furious-that-there-are-no-jobs-for-young-doctors?page=1
included a number of stories. An entire graduating class of nurses unable to find that first job whilst administrators from the local hospital were taking recruitment trips to Asia. An experienced GP wanting to return from a career break only to discovering that she, and others in a similar position, could not find work, a consultant surprised at how well qualified locums seeking zero hours, short notice, cover work are. The number of overseas doctors applying for the limited number of specialist training positions in the UK doubled between 2023 and 2025.

A group of us, who have been on the higher education board since our DC were first applying to medical school, recently discovered that none of our DC, coming to the end of their foundation years (F1& F2) expect to get anything other than the odd shift with NHS bank. Most see moving to Australia as the only way to stay in medicine. They say the same applies to their peers.

Our young doctors have spent seven or eight years getting to where they are, and have £100,000 of student loans to repay. The taxpayer has spent £250,000 on each of them.

Unfortunately the NHS does not appear to keep data on the number of applicants per vacancy, nor on vacancies that, because of the numbers applying, close within a few hours. It also does not appear to question why such a small proportion of F2s are progressing within the NHS. Instead there seems to be an assumption that this wastage is somehow natural, and that the solution is to re-double international recruitment efforts, to increase medical school places, and to replace traditional junior doctor roles with less skilled Physician Associates. Measures that will only increase the problem.

If things are not changed, even more of our skilled and dedicated young people will find themselves without jobs. We would welcome experiences, information and ideas.

Please also spread the word, write to your MP, tell people in a position to influence who may not be aware. We have a shortage of doctors, nurses, midwives, and paramedics. Our first priority is to ensure that those already in the country are able to get jobs.

If young Doctors were asked, and the same will apply to other Health Care Professionals, they would argue that:

• Busy F2s work long shifts including nights which makes extensive job search difficult
• Posts often attract hundreds of applicants, and close within a few hours. This level of competition is in itself off-putting
• Overseas applicants are often supported by agencies who can set alerts for vacancies and ensure that multiple applications are submitted. No such support is offered to UK applicants,
• These agencies will help with the writing of applications so they score well against NHS selection criteria. Again no such careers support is offered to UK applicants.
• The Government/NHS offer incentives for overseas doctors including bringing in dependents and scope for future citizenship, as well as some exemptions from some exams and relocation packages. These may motivate overseas doctors to apply for entry level jobs even if they are overqualified. Entry level jobs which our newly qualified young people need.
• Various extensive and expensive courses are advertised on the internet designed to give participants an advantage when applying for specialist training in the UK. In contrast many UK medical schools do very little to ensure that their graduates have the additional academic super-curricular that, with current levels of competition, are effectively requirements to gain a training place. This year it is predicted that only 50% of the around 4,500 places will go to graduates from UK medical schools, even though it is recognised that for many UK training is simply a passport to well paid jobs in private hospitals in Singapore, Dubai or their home countries. This is poor workforce planning. If we are going to avoid a future shortage of consultants we need to prioritise those likely to build a future in the UK.

Many young doctors will see a couple of years in Australia as a reasonable fall-back. They accept that they will be taking jobs Australians don’t want and will be at the back of the queue when it comes to specialist training, but they will also be gaining experience in a different healthcare environment.

Others, including those with family or caring responsibilities, or those who brought their families over when offered fixed term contracts, simply face unemployment. We should not be recruiting overseas when we have good, qualified, NHS experienced, doctors, nurses and other HCPs in the UK driving Ubers or working in Tesco.

I think contributors to this particular thread might be more impressed if you could give a clear explanation as to how you don't know the requirements for the Oxford Medicine course when you send 'lots' of students to the uni.

Initially you claimed a typo and now you're claiming that your school is the only school in the whole of the UK which has a special deal with Oxford.

How on earth do you expect anyone to take you seriously? An explanation is all that's required. But I do see the difficulty in providing one.

Or we could just leave it. But wow.

I do have heaps of experience and Oxford does not vary its offers. The only flexibility is on results day.

This is actually not in the least funny. You've made far too many claims and you've now shot yourself in the foot by demonstrating that you actually haven't a clue about uni admissions. Or at least Oxford admissions which you claim to know a lot about.

I do have serious concerns about your claims and about how others who are less knowledgeable about this stuff might be taken in. It matters to people on these various medical threads where you've held yourself out as something of an expert with med school admissions and this point illustrates that you don't know the basics. MN needs to be able to rely on posters not puffing themselves up otherwise how can the sharing of info be of the remotest value?

Authenticity really does matter.

This is so upsetting. Knowing people caught up in the mess this has caused has proved to me that doctors are treated like rubbish all the way through their careers

Thank you @Clavinova and @OneMorePiece.

The BMA support for having all positions including entry level positions listed on the shortage occupation list is interesting. I assume then that the lifting of the RMLT in 2021 added to the flames, along with the growth of an offshore "industry" prepping overseas doctors to come here for early experience and a shot at training, jobs lost to PAs, and the growing backlog of those who are having to take short term jobs until they get a training number.

It perhaps explains why the BMA are slow to act now, and why their focus to date seems to be on training positions. Perhaps not just because the numbers are easier to read but perhaps also because there may be some who would prefer not to draw attention to the fact that we have an oversupply of newly qualified health workers yet are still recruiting overseas. (The mess is so stupid and so avoidable that I am starting to reach for a tin hat.)

From what the informed poster on the very first thread suggested, it does not seem to have occurred to anyone that UK grads who are not applying for many jobs here are put off by the sheer weight of numbers. Not because they actually want to have to emigrate.

I still completely wonder about NHS workforce planning. I think it has always been the case that some young doctors will do a job or two to work out what they want to specialise in. From a random sample I know (cousin's DD etc) taking a CTF job or a 12 month contract, most took a year out, yet the NHS seems to thing there is a norm of F2, then training post. They seem to have completely failed to realise that retain newly qualified doctors they need to have work for them.

Tomorrow I think I will start to write to anyone who needs to know what is going on. From various articles and papers, there is quite a long list of people who seem to make a living from NHS planning and decision making. I will need to find a polite way of telling them that they got it wrong.

Thank you again.

From what the informed poster on the very first thread suggested, it does not seem to have occurred to anyone that UK grads who are not applying for many jobs here are put off by the sheer weight of numbers. Not because they actually want to have to emigrate

Well at last a recognition that this poster was well informed. Does that mean that you now accept her much less alarmist interpretation of the data now too?

mums - if you do not understand that the UK needs more doctors than it trains in the training grunt grades to ensure the residents do not work the ridiculous hours of yesteryear - then there is no hope for you. We could give every F2 a training job that some do not deserve and we would still be short and would still be getting IMGs in to fill the slots So why do you think 9000 F2s are about to be unemployed?

YOu refuse to listen to hard facts of people on the shop floor because you who have never worked in or recruited junior doctors knows better than those who have and currently are

So are you saying that 9000 F2s this year are not fit for purpose?

Obviously they are not all Oxford grads with 6xA*s - they're just the ordinary inferior type of resident doctors that go to every other med school, but if that is what you believe to be the case, then why are they being put through 7-8 years and 100k of debt to reach that point? What is wrong with the system that has taken these bright, motivated, highest achieving young people and turned them into something unemployable.

Or it could be that there's an issue with the structure and selection process at the end of the end of F2...

Finallylostit, assuming you are also a mum, though I hear you have also gained a reputation for winding up young medics elsewhere on social media.

I will take you through it again.

1. training jobs are not the focus. Employment is. Entry level jobs are attracting very high levels of applicants to the extent it is highly unlikely that a doctor without experience will be shortlisted.
2. This is our perception based on what our DC are telling us. You think different. Thing is that if we are right and no one looks into it the country will lose a lot of young doctors who don’t want to go and in whom a lot of money has been invested.

We see symptoms that suggest a problem. We want them checked out.

I am perfectly happy to believe we don’t produce enough doctors. All the more reason why we should not lose the ones we have.

Needmoresleep that's out of order to say 'you've heard' something about another poster.

For my part I hear that Reddit is wall to wall moaning minnie junior doctors.

HostessTrolley DS was not particularly special at his school. Their curriculum allowed them to take a larger than normal amount of subjects. I mentioned it only because of a comment to do with envy at (mythical) low offers from Oxford.

Now the Telegraph.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/19/thousands-nhs-doctors-scrapheap-training-chaos/#:~:text=Twenty%20thousand%20doctors%20could%20end,to%20train%20to%20become%20consultants.

You'll need to copy and paste for non subscribers.

As reported none of this makes sense. On one hand we have:

"For years, the RCP campaigned for more medical school places because we know the UK needs more doctors. Now it’s time to invest in these new medical graduates to become the NHS consultants of the future."

On the other:

"Wes Streeting has ordered NHS officials to rewrite the NHS long-term workforce plan, in order to train thousands more staff working in GP and community services." (My italics.) Which will not resolve, and will almost certainly make worse, issues in secondary care.

needmoresleep - thank you for your poor patrionising manners.

In answer to your questions - yes I am a mother to 2 - you can choose to believe that or not

Yes I have worked i the NHS and other countries in a variety of roles

Where you think I have wound medics up on other social platforms I do not know No evidence provided by you to prove I am not what I say I am. I use mumsnet following a fairly difficult divorce and there are some informed posters who make sensible suggestions.
I do not have twitter/X, insta, snap, facebook etc - I do not need my life played out o social media.

I only commented on your thread because it is an area i know a lot about, have valid first hand experience of and could not ignore the utter bunkum and quite frankly "nasty comments you and a few of your cronies have directed your ill informed diatribes at - PAs, older doctors, IMGs, London, unpopular deaneries, white supremacy, male white privilege to name a few of your vile comments.

You may continue to delude yourself about who or what I am - but I am defintiely not on any other social media platforms

I suppose I should be grateful fo small mercies -you finally get some of what many of us have been saying
"I think it has always been the case that some young doctors will do a job or two to work out what they want to specialise in. From a random sample I know (cousin's DD etc) taking a CTF job or a 12 month contract, most took a year out" -yes you get it!

yet the NHS seems to thing there is a norm of F2, then training post. - No you and your cronies do, those of us who know this is part of a wide spectrum of behaviour of young doctors.

They seem to have completely failed to realise that retain newly qualified doctors they need to have work for them. have been saying - we keep telling you there are jobs - lots unfilled.

More medical school places is stupid unless more jobs are provided. This has been pointed out for years. Foundation places are not enough currently- everyone is hoping that this year they'll all have something on decision day.

Workforce planning seems lacking at all stages of doctors careers.

I am very confused.

I will admit I got it wrong. The way you referred to “mums” sounded as if you considered mums as something other. And thank you for sharing. It is useful to have context.

Throughout the thread you have criticised F2s for not putting in the extra hours to be ready to apply for training places when they finished. And seem to think they are cosseted. Your view from your hospital. It is not the experience elsewhere.

Equally you think entry level jobs are going a begging. Again not the view elsewhere. Indeed sometime back you were asked where these jobs were as people are genuinely interested. During a very brief look at Reddit, I noted that IMG doctors looking to in another country were describing the UK market as “saturated”. So again your experience and experience elsewhere seems different.

I don’t understand your reference to “vile diatribes”. Concerns about PA roles is an active debate across medicine and indeed in the media. You may prefer working with PAs.You are entitled to hold this view. Others might feel happier working with those who have trained longer. Whilst I would suggest it is not unreasonable for some people to want priority for those already in the country. It is what happens elsewhere. Ditto they changed the F1 allocation system because some deaneries (London and Severn) were a lot more popular than others (Wales). This pattern of recruitment tends to continue through the different levels, so was used as shorthand. If you have a better term, happy to use it. And so on.

In short we differ on a lot of points. You have different experience so will think others are wrong. In contrast what we are hearing is that, as a result of the lifting of the RLMT, jobs are attracting huge numbers of applications so it is difficult to find work. Since the country should not want to lose good hard working young doctors who they have spent a lot of money training, their claims should be looked at.

This is all such a mess. The more I read the more I understand the polls that suggest student doctors don’t want to stay in the NHS. And that they are not the only group frustrated with the lack of thought through planning and management.

Is there a future for the NHS or is it destined to dies a slow lingering death?

There you go.
https://archive.ph/YKS6s

At no point have I aid the reason FY2s are having a hrd time is because they are cossetted and dod not do the extra - my response has been to those Mums who think just being a jolly good egg and getting good appraisals should guarantee you a training place. That is a point I fundamentally disagree with. Not all doctors should become consultants, infact a minority will. I do believe in competition because it pushes you harder to strive for better for your patients.

Cossetted yes - compared to previous generations and many countries around the world they are. Many of the mums on here fail to understand the support mechanisms the old arrogant consultants and doctors have put in place for them, recognising the deficiencies that were there before. Where you applied for every job every 6 months, a year if you were lucky and god forbid 2 yeas. It was crap, stressful but definitiely character building. You and your fellow mums fail to realise EVERY foundation doctor has an educational supervisor who meets a minimum of 3 times per 6 months with their resident, sets targets, advises on audit, papers, courses, career directions etc, they are the ones who sign all the mountain of portfolio work off that the residents need to progress. They then have anything from 1-3 clinical supervisors - again consultants who see them on wards, clinics etc and check their clinical progress - many will also give caeer feedback make suggestions etc.
That is cossetted compared to the past - I agree with some of the structure but do think it has gone bit too far and some, not all our residents but some lack some resilience.to set backs.

The step from foundation to the big medical world is a big one - you are treated like a paid semi student for 2 years - proper doctor but not really and for the first time since entering medical school, you have to stand up on your own two feet, choose a possible speciality, decide to leave medicine, research etc - you are no longe part of the pack, all doing it together. Some will fly, some will stutter and some will fail for multiple reasons. - but that is life in any profession It is stressful.

The NHS needs a lot of low level grunt doctors and fewer at the top. Some of the mums seem to think every medical student should have a consultant job avaialble for them - it is not needed and not everyone wants to do the unpopular jobs. The person who said less academic people go into Geriatrics - is so off the mark with what a care of the elderly physician does!

You only have to look 10 yrs post gradution and see the variety of careers people have taken 120 in does not mean 120 consutlants /GPs etc - personal choice comes into it and that is v hard to predict. In my nephews year 11 of them are doing general surgery, 2 neurosurgery, a fair smattering of l other surgical peciities and a shed load of GPs - where is dermatology, psych paeds etc in his cohort - non existent.

I dislike the blaming done by you and some fellow mums - you have some valid points but they have been lost in the inability to listen to the other side and experience that people have on the shop floor on the recruiting side and the challenges they face

This made me feel v queasy, but might start to explain why we are here

www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2427

Once again mumsneedswines- brings in another topic she wants to use as an excuse for foundation doctors being given a hard time, without understanding how some of these schemes - often run by national governments work.

That woman was treated appallingly

The NHS needs a lot of low level grunt doctors and fewer at the top.

This is understood. Though some have sat the exams needed to apply for training others haven't Instead wanting a bit more experience of time. They are perfectly happy to be "low level grunt doctors"

These are the jobs they are struggling to get. They have been listed as jobs where the UK has a skills shortage. The lifting of the RMLT means that applications are open worldwide. Not just them. Lots of other Doctors worldwide, especially given the expansions of private medical schools in places like Malaysia, are equally desperate to get that basic experience. The demand for these jobs is huge. Positions will be given to the best applicant.

You suggest that Foundation years no longer provide sufficient experience and responsibility. You will not be surprised that when a job attracts several hundred applicants it is likely to go to someone from overseas, with good experience in a demanding environment.

This is not their fault. And I doubt it is the fault of their mothers.

Some of these doctors who are struggling to find employment will make good consultants. Others will take different paths within medicine but will still make a valuable contribution. But they need that first job, the job that gives them the experience.

You regularly say there are lots of jobs. There are lots of jobs. The problem is the competition for those entry level jobs, given so many young and not so young doctors world wide are looking for that experience.

And for your information this is not about my child. They will be fine. They will make their own decisions including whether the NHS is still the employer they want to work for. My background is Whitehall policy at a fairly senior level. Not health, but I have enough background to recognise that this is bad policy: for the tax payer; for the NHS; and for our newly qualified doctors.And that it is potentially a political banana skin.

@Finallylostit lovely as usual. This is a post from a BMA representative not me. If you really can't see how it's related to this issue then that's sad.

Never thought I'd agree with the Telegraph!

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/19/thousands-nhs-doctors-scrapheap-training-chaos/

We've been here before. Change can happen.