My two previous threads:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5267503-aibu-to-be-furious-that-there-are-no-jobs-for-young-doctors
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5275818-aibu-to-be-angry-that-government-policy-means-young-doctors-nurses-and-other-hcps-cannot-find-jobs
There have been others probably starting about 18 months ago when problems started to bite. If you look at the bottom of the page they are listed.
My thread was sparked when a group of us whose DC had all applied to medical school at the same time realised that none of our DC expected to be able to find work or training. I was aware that DD had quickly moved from loving her job, and even buying a house, saying she wanted to stay for the foreseeable future, to being very negative and talking about giving up medicine. I thought it was her, but we then realised the system was denying our DC a career path and that they were each handling it in their own way.
(The house is proof she is in a remote place. You can find four bed properties near her current hospital for £60,000! Should she have to move it is a way of having somewhere to come back to rather than, like so many doctors starting on the property ladder in her mid 30s - another cost of the current approach.)
Our DC are different. went to different types of schools, in different parts of the country, different ambitions, and with different ethnic backgrounds. Yet they were all struggling.
This thread is also different. There are, finally, a lot fewer calls of racism. I think the poster whose DC had studied in Eastern Europe finally realised that their DC, who may or may not have been a MN style genius, was likely to face the same issues. I think BAPIO, or our current friend, are also realising that awareness is growing and that suggestion that UK trained doctors are cannot turn up to work on time, lazy and in other ways not ready to take responsibility simply serves to irritate.
Some of the criticism I have heard of BAPIO (and I bend the ear of everyone I come across - Friday was the husband of a friend who is a connected Whitehall lobbyist and who threw out a few ideas and promised to think some more) is coming from South Asians (I speak an Asian language and attend events related to that country). My impression is that it is seen as a boys club, representing interests including commercial interests, of specific boys. Others, including NHS staff of South and SE Asian origin, are unhappy about the strength of this group and the lack of sensitivity towards what might be described as the host population. They have worked hard for the NHS and have integrated well with their colleagues and their community. Their children are British. The last thing they want as they are on the verge of retirement in the Britain that they see as home is a group promoting difference and disadvantaging their children and the children of their friends.
They also understand, because they went through the same themselves, the value of British training and the choices then available to international doctors. Close to 30 years ago when I first returned from Asia, I was invited to the house of an Asian doctor friend who had returned to the UK at the same time as me, specifically invited to support research led by a former boss of hers. Everyone else was a doctor, all nearing consultancy level and the conversation was about next steps. Commit to the UK, return home or take a very well paid job in the growing Singaporean private health market. Even back then the NHS was crumbling and the UK cost of living was high, though the value of the more open British society was also appreciated. The NHS is now even more difficult and salaries have fallen in real term, and my friend reports that colleagues who decided to stay face a second round of decision making when their children go off to University. They thought they would stick it out, but a decade of the sort of salary that a Consultant with good experience in a London teaching hospital can command in Dubai or Singapore is tempting. Indeed I know a very senior and well regarded British born and trained doctor who took the Dubai dirham as a final post retirement job.
(FWIW my friend is very shocked at what is happening to my DD. Not least because we have a mutual friend in Asia whose DC are the same age as mine and whose mother has used her expertise, money and contacts to guide them through the system. Private medical school with in Asia with hospitals in Europe etc. Struck lucky during Covid when her DC was graduated early and retained, and now GP training, where the mother's knowledge and support means he had all the CV enhancements in terms of research, competitions and higher level academic programmes. It had been a bit of a joke. A determined Asian mother and perhaps not the most promising raw material. Despite his mothers contacts he was not able to get into one of the University medical schools in his own country. In fairness he has stuck at it, but for various reasons and even if he were British, I don't think many in our friendship group would prefer him over DD or indeed over the good F2s they work with. And very unlikely he will stay once his training is over. Clean and remunerative private medicine is more his thing.)
The last thread ended as a real bunfight caused by determined thread diverters. I received some useful and informed PMs, one of which confirmed that BAPIO were present. We should take heart from the more subdued reaction this time. MN itself is a useful way of spreading the word. But we can each, in our own way keep chipping away. (MPs, contacts.) Awareness is growing. There are more articles and more statistics. Stermer has already warned the NHS that it needs to wean itself off reliance on imported labour. Things will change, because they can't carry on as they are. But for the sake of our own DC we need to speed the process up.