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.

There is so much to this.

Is there a quick message we can send to MPs followed by more detailed points?

For example reverse Tory change in 2021 immediately and suspend sponsorship immediately? With examples of numbers of IMGs applying for training places leading to unemployed UK graduates....

The doctors will be employed first week of August so will need to move towards a huge effort to get more detailed information out then.

@OneMorePiece
" 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. "

This is a conflict of interest, surely?

This needs Newsnight or Panorama or The Guardian to investigate surely?

I mean, it's like the biggest red flag ever. With a siren to go with.....

Unless I'm missing something?

Please can we come up with 3 quick points while we do a deep dive?

1 This coming August, British doctors completing foundation training and applying for next-stage specialist training around the age of 26-28, are very likely find themselves unemployed, after tax payers have spent around (?) £230k on their training.

2 In part, this has been caused by large-scale training by academies in the UK attracting international medical graduates from, mostly, India. Many of these candidates are excellent but British organisations of any kind shouldn’t undertake massive overseas recruitment if it leads to large-scale unemployment in the equally qualified British workforce. Vested interests in the medical profession make it hard to challenge this situation, as do understandable concerns about appearing racist.

I did mention the possibility of a conflict of interests before. I don't know if anyone picked up on it then.

If you and I can see it, surely those influential within the NHS can't possibly have missed the potential impact of all this on UK doctors. Obviously, we can't be sure but all this needs clarifying. For example, if the IMG lobby group are making recommendations to management at the hospitals or are part of NHS policy making, how much of the NHS budget is spent implementing the changes the lobby recommends? If that affects local doctors, has anyone done an assessment of how proposals might impact UK training and other opportunities for the existing NHS workforce? Accomodating every demand the lobby group makes is expensive for the NHS and has its consequences.

Playing devils advocate at this rate shut down UK medical schools and just recruit from abroad?

The UK did it with outsourcing IT jobs abroad.

The GMC should pause PLAB.

The NHS needs to stop recruiting new IMGs who have yet to enter the NHS workforce through sponsorship licences granted by the GMC to the academies, etc until the issue of unemployed UK doctors is addressed.

There needs to be a reinstatement of the the RLMT or similar legal safeguard put in place to protect the doctors already here. Allocate UK doctors before IMGs. I mentioned the complications with this in a previous post.

Removal of the RLMT back in 2021 was welcomed by many UK businesses that wanted to recruit overseas workers at lower salaries than the domestic workforce so expect them to oppose reinstating the RLMT too.

One more point is that the NHS should not be accepting CREST forms signed off outside the UK from new IMGs as it's not a robust way of filtering out applications as fraudulent ones have been made that way.

Thanks. Could they just reinstate RLMT for doctors because of unemployment?

With IMGs already here would training places be linked to indefinite leave to remain?

No, in the long run that is the most damaging thing you can do.

They need to stop expanding medical school places until issues with the training bottleneck are addressed.

The countries that are most successful are those that invest in the education of their young people. Training the young people of other countries at the expense of your own young people has its consequences.

Completely agree was just painting a picture of the future if UK government don't do anything pretty soon.

Does anyone know if a visa is need before applying via Oriel for foundation/specialty training?

Yes, I agree. The other issue not relevant to this thread of course is the lack of funding for UK universities which is leading to many relying on increasing their overseas intake. I think you will find that even in the most competitive courses targeted by overseas students where there used to be a 60-70% intake of overseas students, the percentage of overseas students taking up places is increasing. On some sought after courses, once those are allocated the small number of remaining places are left for UK students.

Young people in the UK are finding themselves at the back of the queue in housing, education and jobs. This shouldn't be happening as they are the future of the UK economy.

Politicians should be wary of various lobby groups etc with strong connections to their home countries and ensure they don't have a disproportionate level of influence over UK organisations, for example the NHS.

“surely those influential within the NHS can't possibly have missed the potential impact of all this on UK “

The mistake you are making is assuming that those influential people within the NHS are British born.

I can’t speak for Drs and can only speak for my trust, but in the case of AHPs in our trust, the workforce planning lead is an immigrant who came over from India a few years ago, worked clinically for a short time and was then promoted into this role. They link with India to employ more AHPs

If international students train here, don’t they have to return on completion of their training?

No. After graduating from medical school, they can stay in the UK and enter training just like home students. They will be granted the appropriate visa for that. There are then pathways to permanent settlement for them just like for new IMGs.

And I presume if they tightened up on this, eg gave uk born students priority for these posts and limited the right to remain for international students to a couple of years, with less right to remain, then that would affect the number of international students applying and universities rely on them for funding?

The current Labour government is in the process of changing the immigration rules to get net migration figures down so hopefully things might improve for UK doctors but there is opposition to what they are trying to do. The IMG numbers are very high and there are some who are very influential opposing UK MG prioritisation.

It would be interesting to understand more about the reasons for opposition to this and the demographic of those influencing this. Freedom of information request?

On the surface it seems completely economically counterproductive to have hundreds of unemployed uk medical students while at the same time inviting others from abroad, or extending visas of those already here etc.

It must be legally and morally ok to prioritise uk born students if other countries do it.

Also, I imagine the numbers of uk students who have trained abroad (which does muddy the water) is minute in comparison, and even if not, it would be unlikely that they would present as a hugely more attractive candidate that those trained in the uk with experience of the nhs already.

Even if the government did something straight away. There are around 20,000 UK graduates without a training post that will be applying next year. This disgusting mess will have repercussions for years.

The number of international students that can access medical training is capped so the numbers are unlikely to be as large as internationals doing tech or finance courses staying on and accessing UK jobs after graduating. Unfortunately, non-medical UK university graduates in very competitive sectors have been adversely affected by the post Brexit points based immigration system too.

UK universities have become reliant on international students to finance them to the extent that some have over expanded. Unfortunately, there are many that are not attracting the numbers they were hoping for even after spending lots on facilities to attract internationals. International course fees are so high that internationals come only if the course allows them to access the opportunities they want to further their careers. If the UK doesn't let them stay on after graduating to pursue the jobs they want, some might not come to the UK at all so that's why universities are opposing the tightening of immigration rules where students are concerned.

More here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89pvd58nd3o

This is really off. Has anyone challenged them about this?

Unemployed UK trained doctors and nurses and this goes on?