Junior Doctors Unemployment in August part 2

[PurpleFairyLights]

Following on from previous thread.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5337022-junior-doctors-unemployment-in-august?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Oh dear. We really have touched a nerve.

Answer. Quite a lot. Empathy goes a long way to helping v many people, surely a medic would know that ?

I’m a registrar. I recognise my privelige. Senior doctors on here don’t seem to realise that despite previous issues with doctor training (it’s cyclical it seems) - we have never before had a time where doctors are en masse planning to sign up for Jobseeker’s Allowance. Or competing with applicants from the rest of the world. I’m a middle grade and realise my luck at progressing before the system started to fall apart.

Look at the points needed for an IMT interview now - my friends and I (higher specialty trainees now) all say we’d struggle to have gotten an interview if we were an F2 now! Have some godamn empathy for your junior colleagues.

hard for you to grasp I know, but academic supernovas can also have excellent people skills. There's no point taking the best history in the world If you can't follow it with an accurate diagnosis. If it's OK for you to say that very clever people can't be empathetic is it alright for me to say that empathetic people can't be clever? Thought not

👏

That is funny. Keep them coming..

@oddandelsewhere i am actually shocked that any medic would question the importance of empathy in the profession. It may not cure someone, but not having it sure as hell can kill someone. Perhaps a bit more empathy from the “Oxford-educated consultant with an air of supreme confidence” who played a pivotal role in the tragic case of poor Martha Mills might have made a difference.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/sep/03/13-year-old-daughter-dead-in-five-weeks-hospital-mistakes

It should be possible to highlight the current concerns about the jobs gap without descending into personal attacks and ignoring the nuance and balance of other views. I agree with @mumsneedwine and @PurpleFairyLights that this seems an unprecedented issue and is very concerning for many UK doctors. But your antagonistic attitude and blinkered view of things undermines your argument. What could have been a useful thread has just descended into pettiness, mainly due to you two.

mumsneedwine as a part time Chemistry teacher - as laudable and necessary as that profession is - you simply will not deal with 'hundreds of doctors'. That's plain nonsense, let's face it. I can say that with a high level of confidence. The problem is that hyper exaggeration on this level seriously dents credibility generally. Even as a Head of Sixth of a large school you might have a handful of medical contacts that you speak to regularly and form a relationship with, no more. Also, assuming that your school did get eleven students into Oxbridge for Medicine last year (quite an assumption given the numbers involved but whatever), I hope you give some credit to your colleagues for this success, because you do seem to take a lot of credit for yourself.

Welcome 😂. Are these your first posts?

To become a doctor in the UK you must be intelligent to get the grades to get into medical school and to get an MBBS. The process is not open to corruption.

Therefore, all new doctors will have a minimum level of knowledge to build on throughout their years but an empathetic doctor will get more from a patient whether they are a supernova or not.

Wow what a nasty post.

I don't think so. We have been battling for weeks and answering in kind. Have you read both threads?

It is simple the government need to go back to pre-2019 where UK grads took priority..

We have been met with some awful assertions about soon to be unemployed doctor like they are not good enough to get a training place. Ignoring that 60,000 applications for 12,000 training places is the problem. 1 in 5 chance of getting into training and being accused of not being good enough...

I think it's a very fair post. No teacher even a Head of Sixth has 'hundreds of doctors' helping them advise their students. It's nonsense and on these threads it's fair to call out nonsense. As I say, I'm able to say this is nonsense with absolute confidence. Some doctors sure, a clutch highly plausible, hundreds - just no.

Fortunately no plot twist. You say 'battling'. Who are you battling? No-one who has decision making powers or authority will be reading a tennis match of abuse being waged on AIBU on MN.

Battling posters that are saying the unemployed doctors were not good enough to get a training post and ignoring the impact of 60,000 applicants for 12,000 jobs.

Are you a doctor?

What on earth is the purpose of this 'battle' on MN? The other posters are way less offensive to you and mumsneedwine than you both are to them, they speak with the benefit of considerable professional experience and are way more eloquent. All in all, vastly more persuasive. The two of you are doing yourselves no favours here.

Laura Spence. I remember her very clearly - she did get a place at medical school, but not at Oxford, so flounced off to do a totally unrelated course in the States.

You don’t remember MTAS then? Not a single medical SHO in my large teaching hospital trust got a post. Lots went to Australia. I went to Canada. Most never came back.

Why can't we post on a thread in order to highlight a huge number of unemployed doctors?

What is it to you? Seems very strange to be commenting on that.

The two posters you are talking about are not speaking from considerably professional experience at all. They have huge gaps in knowledge and understanding of the very real issues.

Please see comments from other doctors questioning their assertions and take note that they never answer those doctors questions.

She did BioChem at Harvard on a scholarship. Not convinced that she flounced off there though. She was quoted in the papers as saying that she'd not performed well at interview and that Oxford was right not to take her - she hadn't shown that she had adequate potential. She later went to Cambridge, read Medicine and graduated with distinction.

Of course you can post on threads. It's just that the terminology of war seems massively over the top.

@LemondrizzleSharki remember this. However don’t remember Doctor unemployment being an issue. You were able to find work, somewhere in something as a doctor. This is not the case today. Even stand alone F3 posts are competitive whereas previously (over 20 years ago) they were for people who couldn’t get a training number

That is funny, although don't like the undertone. Keep them coming.

Yes I’ve read both threads and I strongly supported your views at the beginning. And I still have lots of sympathy for the resident doctors in this position. But your childish arguments in response to some pretty insightful and thought provoking posters like @wannabewitch are losing you the argument on this thread.

I do still hope that Wes takes some meaningful action to address the issue. And whilst it’s good that you are raising awareness, just be mindful of how you are coming across.

We were literally told by Elizabeth Paice to leave medicine, and that we “clearly weren’t cut out to be doctors” if we hadn’t obtained a run-through post. We were told to look at retraining as accountants or solicitors. This was a face to face meeting with her which was meant to be “counselling” us. I was just six months into a three year SHO rotation, and clearly couldn’t compete with somebody who was an SHO6, had MRCP and publications etc.

We were also told that if unsuccessful we would never be eligible to apply ever again, even in subsequent years, as we would be too senior. Run-through training would only be open to new FY2s going forwards. To repeat, at that point our existing employment contracts had been torn up, all the posts had been turned into training posts and the number of posts had been halved, there were no F3 posts or JCFs to go into. It was outright, deliberate gleeful cruelty in the name of “not giving us false hope”.

It was unspeakable. People committed suicide, swathes of junior doctors left the country. Bad as this is, it is not on that scale. It was just not well publicised because the internet and social media was not as well developed, but ask anyone who graduated between 2000-5 about it and they will have some tales to tell.

Obviously it was all a massive shitshow and was all eventually reversed, but that is no comfort to those of us who had colleagues overdosing on insulin in the ward toilet because they thought they had lost their whole career.

I graduated in the time frame you mentioned and I do remember the MTAS debacle and loads going abroad but no huge outcry about doctors unemployment. All my cohort I knew of got some kind of job although not all got training numbers straight off. To get a training number in a chosen speciality was always competitive so I don’t understand why you were discouraged from reapplying. Sorry to hear about what you went through.