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.

Can someone please do something to stop NHS doctors openly complaining to patients. They may feel hard done by but comparatively they are significantly more privileged than 95% of the population.

The perpetual whingeing does them no favours regardless of the prevailing government. If DH or I were to openly complain to key stakeholders about our institutions it would be regarded as gross misconduct and we would be dismissed.

@oddandelsewhere I cannot see why anyone let this happen! We do have high calibre students but training too many who refuse to move away from home area was always going to cause issues. I have been amazed at some unis being allowed medical schools - Buckingham? We aren’t discerning.

It isn't just doctors either, many UK educated nurses and physician associates are struggling. There are many decisions that have led to this, including Brexit fallout and what came next.

Our Trust currently seems to think AI is the solution to everything, God help us.

Plenty of UK educated managers still though.

Yes, it did.

My best friend used to be a paramedic, trained as a doctor, qualified, and couldn't get a job. That was before we elected (more of the same) the new government.
The NHS is broken and has been broken for a very long time.

@TizerorFizzbut the job number DO match the graduates. It’s approx 13,000 speciality jobs for 12,000 UK graduates. It’s why medical school places are capped by law. It’s expensive to train doctors so they should be employed. To recoup taxpayers money.

The issue now is that you can apply from anywhere in the world on the same footing as those who have worked in the NHS already.
An example. A consultant in India wants to move here (for experience, passport so can go to Australia etc). But can’t get a consultant job (not many of these either). So he applies for a training post, intended for a 2 year qualified doctor. Due to the selection process being a point a based system he gets the post as has worked longer. Nothing about being better at it. He’ll stay 1-2 years and then go home or go elsewhere. NHS experience counts for a lot abroad.

I expect I’ll be called racist. Usually am. What I am is furious that our own trained doctors (from
whatever country or background) are going to be unemployed.

And please find me a current F2 who is not prepared to move for a job. Where is ‘home’ for them ? They moved for Uni, were moved again for foundation training (v often away from everyone they knew). And they’ll have to move again, lots of times, for speciality training. Moving is not an issue preventing them working !

Part of the difficulty when it comes to willingness to move is the fact that most couples now need two careers to survive. When doctors used to have house wives moving was easier. Now that doctors are often the lower paid professional in the family, they can't just drag their partner to the middle of nowhere. So whilst yes doctors have always had to move, the fact that partners have their own often more lucrative careers makes that difficult. Plus most female docs I know aren't working full time so they can't just move their family half way across the country on a part time wage. Am female so not anti female doctors but just talking about how things have changed.

Thank you for raising this. My DC would move anywhere for a job and in F1/F2 and ST1/ST2 went where offered training job. The only place they do not want to go to is abroad. They want to work as a doctor in their own country.

This is the core problem. Anyone in the world can apply now.

My friend completed her nursing degree this year and she was facing a similar situation and panicking
But they’ve all got jobs.

It was on LBC news last night that Royal College of Nursing were asking for nursing graduates to have a guaranteed job.

Why is doctor's union (British Medical Association) not doing the same.?

@385nfw maybe female doctors working part time while still training is part of the problem? They will take longer to train, and possibly look less committed if working less than full time while still in their late 20's or early 30's.
Hysterically funny that you think this cosmopolitan cohort would have to move to a hospital 'in the middle of nowhere'. There really aren't very many of those.

What does your MP say?

Should we all be writing to our MPs?

We need to train more doctors here. This process needs to work for them!

No , not in my book

I am sorry for your Daughter and any others in such a position .. especially with that loan amount ..
Hopefully things will change .. . but I won't hold my breath.

Training areas (deaneries) are multiple tens, if not hundreds of miles across. While hospitals in ‘the middle of nowhere’ are rare, hospitals are often in or on the outskirts of small towns, not near enough to major cities for commuting to be a possibility. Lots and lots of professional jobs require being near to a major city. There is nothing ‘cosmopolitan elite’ about that.

And yeah, maybe we should ban women applying all together for medicine, unless they sign a contract that they won’t have children. I’m sure going back to the days of men only medicine would be great for patient care…

I am an ahp and interview for junior staff regularly (before our trust put a freeze on recruitment). When we put out an advert for a new junior post we are flooded with non uk applicants from places like Nigeria. Some have many years of experience.

The way the screening process works can sometimes give them the advantage, and the interview process is the same because if you do it fairly it is points based.

A couple of years ago I tried to question the fairness of this, as in my opinion it would be more fair and cost effective for the trust to recruit someone uk based, but it fell on deaf ears and i think people are scared to complain too much in case they come across as racist. The problem is that we are clinical staff not HR or employment experts, so no one really understands the full impact or cost implications.

I know we have employed numerous staff from India in the past (who are all dedicated and hard-working by the way), but that’s it involves sponsoring them and sourcing accommodation for them for the initial three months, so it is a massive undertaking. It always seemed wrong to me.

@PurpleFairyLightsif you’re not involved with doctors it’s hard to believe how badly they are treated. Even once they are in a deanery they can be placed, every 6 months, at hospitals several
hours apart. It’s hard to settle, make friends, build a family. Rotational training sucks.

Nurses are unemployed this year too. And the BMA are asking for jobs for all doctors, however there are many IMGs in the BMA leadership who don’t like the idea (see recent GP vote).

@Watermelonices thanks for trying. It’s all madness. But at least it’s finally getting noticed.

@oddandelsewhere I know doctors, married and with children, who have to live 100s of miles apart in order to have jobs. For years. Because the NHS is a callous employer who hates doctors it seems.

I "Thanked" You as it says Thank with the clapping hands but its applause

Absolutely a spot on post. 👏👏

Disagree. I think it is good they complain so we know what is happening.
Not everyone is up to date and it is good to hear form the horse's mouth. We then have a choice to write to our Mps.

This has been a problem since the Blair/Brown days in the early 2000s. My DH had to move all over the country every six months, fresh applications etc whilst trying to complete his MRCS. I cannot imagine how hard it must be for junior doctors now with even more competition for places.

Sadly the nhs are decades behind other employers when it comes to employee wellbeing, flexible working and mental health. They are firmly in the camp of employer knows best and staff will all comply, despite advertising the opposite.

Demands and targets are being constantly raised, staff morale and stress issues are huge. Micromanaging and nit picking and frequently pointing out negatives are regular features by management who have not worked clinically for decades, if at all, but still think they know the best way of running things.

To be honest I ha e taken advice about whether we can say on job ads, that meet the thresholds for sponsorship, "this role is not eligible for sponsorship" and have been advised by an immigration lawyer that doing so will open us to a discrimination claim.

@RosesAndHelleboresyou do realise why the NHS was to be ‘saved’ ? Because all
the staff were dealing with Covid, so if you had a heart attack there were no staff left to save you. And it took a while to reopen as many of those staff were burned out and had stress from watching so many people die every day. My friend watched 18 people die one night. She lived away from her kids for 3 months so not to infect them. She worked 20 hour days. And for doing all this she tooK a pay cut of 35%.

If you lost respect for doctors during covid I have no words. Clapping was an insult.

Those who were at home, furloughed, had no idea what was going on in hospitals.