Junior Doctors Unemployment in August

[PurpleFairyLights]

Name changed but long term poster. Have a child that is in this situation with 100k of student debt.

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2025-05-07/bma-we-could-potentially-see-thousands-of-unemployed-doctors

Unbelievable this was allowed. Most countries protect their medical graduates.

I don't. I was there for a meeting earlier in the week.

I guess we need two lists. Points to make. And people who might be contacted.

I'm quite busy over the next few days, but I will have a stab at it ASAP. Picking up data and suggestions from here.

Unless someone else want to have a first go.

No doubt our thread disrupters will keep the thread going by repeatedly reminding us our DC are so stupid they don't deserve jobs.

Sorry got wrong end of the stick.

Shall we work together? I have started gathering points together from this thread but only on page 2 due to work commitments... Maybe I work from beginning and you work from middle onwards. Not scientific but we can DM each other what done and start to work on a master....

@wannabewitch please tell us these professions where 13 hour night shifts involve having other peoples lives in your hands. Every shift. I’m fascinated.

‘Bits people find fun’. Is that the constant rotation to a new place every 6 months. The lack of staff so every shift in under staffed and over runs. The not being able to have a water bottle on the ward because doctors don’t have a desk and they are not allowed in the staff room as they are not ‘permanent’. Not having a working computer with a complete set of letters. All that fun ?

Sounds good. Will DM. I may also start on possible contacts. Happy to hear from others as well.

Awareness of the issue is growing. People I have spoken to are genuinely shocked and perplexed. Whatever we do should help increase pressure on the Government to act. If nothing else they cannot keep having increasing numbers graduate from medical schools with no jobs for them at the end.

Great. Good plan. There is a lot of great information on this thread already. Very grateful. Please keep posting information.

@Needmoresleep still a deafening silence from Shaun Lintern at the Times. Weird as he usually likes a good NHS story. Contacts at other outlets have become v interested so hopeful of more noise. August is going to be interesting. Some are waiting to see it happen and then print. The more public awareness the more likely this will change

What about MD at private eye? They usually take a stance on government incompetance / waste and are good at investigating things.

Also it isn't just doctors (though I know that is the focus of the thread) there seem to be analogous issues with other healthcare professionals such as nurses.

I actually think its a general problem with governance in the UK that government take advice from lobby groups with vested interests and overlook very obvious problems.

@LeviOceanStar I agree. But can only take on one fight at a time while full time working 😊. As a teacher who supports students to do medicine, mostly from WP backgrounds, it’s getting harder to promote it as a career.

@oddandelsewhere

”Look, I get that some of you don't like the competitive system which prevails for doctors progressing.”

i think what we get (among other things) is that you’re being deliberately obtuse when you refer to the current situation as a ‘competitive system’.

All this is directly from the article (from January 2023) in the link below. It just may be that a few years on we are now seeing how it is possibly affecting training capacity for UK doctors.

“This training initiative is designed specially to help International doctors gain experience at core and higher levels in UK hospitals.”

India is now producing over 82,000 medical graduates every year through its network of 576 medical colleges

“However, there are limited numbers of Post Graduate training positions and more so for positions that offer a high level of training. Indian medical schools use similar textbooks and curriculum to the UK, which means knowledge and skills are largely transferable between the two systems. Large numbers of doctors of Indian origin already practice in the NHS providing a useful support network for new arrivals,”

Singhal elaborated that the purpose is, “To train highly skilled Indian physicians in Family and General Medicine, Paediatrics, Psychiatry and Emergency Medicine and Leadership and Research in order to manage, lead and develop especially Family and General Medicine in India, need of the hour in India. Family and General Medicine is the backbone of any robust health service.”

British training is internationally recognized and is attractive to doctors in India, especially to those who are unable to obtain a PG seat in India.

https://asianlite.com/2023/uk-news/bapio-in-uk-gears-up-to-save-nhs-seeks-educational-ties-with-india/

Even if the schemes alone weren't directly contributing to the large numbers, the publicity around it, the design of the recruitment system, the removal of the RLMT and the points based system would have encouraged larger numbers of overseas applicants to apply whether through the academy 's training schemes, directly or through recruitment agencies eager to make the most of the opportunities.

On the ITV website a week or so ago:

*In 2019, UK graduate doctors lost their job application priority for specialty training posts, and since then the number of applications from International Medical Graduates (IMGs) has drastically increased.

Last year, there were over 25,000 applicants for fewer than 13,000 available places, and 58% of these applicants were trained abroad. This year, the number of applicants has risen to over 33,000, with 63% coming from doctors trained outside the UK. *

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2025-05-07/bma-we-could-potentially-see-thousands-of-unemployed-doctors

This is getting even more concerning. I was worried enough about us not prioritising UK graduates.

Wow this policy is hugely unethical in many different ways

Some of the IMGs will be people originally from UK who went to places like Prague and other eastern European medical schools because they did not get a place at a UK medical school so will want to come "home" once graduated. Of course these only represent a fraction of the total IMGs.

Yes, this complicates prioritisation. Do you prioritise them or the international students who graduate from UK medical schools? IMGs already in the UK and working in the NHS will have to be accommodated too. Unfortunately the numbers in these groups and UK MGs exceed available posts making the issue of prioritisation difficult. This is possibly why there is opposition from certain groups but there has to be a solution.

Until then, what should be paused, as soon as possible, is new recruitment from abroad until the medics in the UK are accommodated, the PLAB and training academies signing up new IMGs onto their expensive courses and placing them in the NHS through the sponsorship route.

Surely sponsorship should only be allowed if there are surplus jobs?

I don’t think it needs to complicate anything too much. Surely you prioritise your citizens? Ie, offer a job to an international (anything) graduate, if they are a citizen. If you can’t fill the role, you look elsewhere. This happens in many other industries?

Exactly but the academy has obtained a license to sponsor IMGs so the whole process is easier.

Who gave them the licence?

The way numbers are going it seems pointless for UK to have medical schools when the chance of having a job as a doctor long term after graduation seems to be becoming less likely.

These are likely to be UK citizens who for one reason or another didn't get a place at a UK medical school because of so much competition for places although not necessarily the weakest students.
Presumably now post COVID and increase in university fees there are far more undergrad places at med schools so instead of the bottle neck at eighteen and going abroad it happens at 26.
The other thing not taken into account is that while having restrictions on training places we are getting more trainees who are working less than full time hours because being in their early thirties will be starting families but according to the system is taking a training place but there is no one in that gap covering the days the trainee doesn't work so clinics will get cancelled or waiting times increased (or fingers crossed for no shows among patients)

Probably need priority for UK grads/UK citizens. There will also be IMGs already on visas. Not sure if visas are for 5 years . Then everyone else.

I think it used to be UK/EU then everyone else.

Yes, there was a legal requirement to do that before the Resident Labour Market Test was abolished in January 2021 unless there were exemptions. See link below for article from 2020 for more information on what happened in January 2021 with links to the points based system that replaced it .

https://immigrationbarrister.co.uk/resident-labour-market-test-all-you-need-to-know/

I think that the reinstatement of the RLMT or something similar would really help with prioritisation of UK MGs. However, a large number of IMGs arrived and are working in the NHS, especially since 2021 after the Tories relaxed the immigration rules. As they have not yet worked long enough, they don't qualify for Indefinite Leave to Remain Status. If prioritisation was introduced, (and say preference given to IMGs with ILR after UKMGs) this category of NHS workers short of the 5 year qualifying period for ILR will miss out on training posts. As you can expect many IMGs would then be affected and the IMG lobby supporting them would oppose this. This IMG lobby is heavily involved in workforce planning in many NHS hospitals. Their training academy has a license to sponsor new IMGs from the GMC so new recruitment of IMGs is a smoother process. New IMGs on some of their courses are charged £32K plus each to be placed in NHS roles. The BMA Council Chair from 2017-2022 is on the lMG lobby's advisory board. What I don't understand is how and why the recruitment of IMGs has happened on the scale we are seeing and seemingly at the expense of UK MGs. How did we end up with a recruitment system that has only just recently started putting UK doctors (MGs & IMGs), and IMGs new to the UK with no NHS experience on an equal footing for training posts?

The Labour government is currently making changes to prioritise the domestic workforce. However, Yvette Cooper's plan to change the ILR requirement from 5 years of legal residence to 10 years is facing much opposition. Other than IMGs working in the NHS who are short of the 5 years, lots of people came from abroad to work in other industries when the immigration rules were relaxed under Boris. As you can expect, they too aren't happy with the changes planned by the Labour government to tighten immigration rules. However, something needs to be done asap. The resinstatement of the RLMT or some similar legal safeguard is perhaps the easiest route to prioritising UK doctors given the huge numbers of unemployed UK NHS workers.

The GMC issues the sponsorship licence to the academy. These sponsorship licences need to be reviewed and perhaps the sponsorship route needs to be paused given there is a huge surplus of IMGs already in the UK and UK MGs that can't find employment.