Marchesman, Interesting statistics.
That said, I could not find anything that gave the number of applicants per place. for locally employed doctors. This is where this years problem seemed to lie. Even if others see it as a form of laziness, it is inevitable that there is less motivation for a F2 to apply for a job if it will attract several hundred, even thousands of applicants, especially if weight will be given to experience and further qualifications. And this is before you add in the practicalities when applications close within a few hours. Applicants represented by an overseas agency who do the legwork for you have a head start.
Your statistics did not show this year, when the impact of opening up NHS jobs worldwide really started to impact UK graduates employment prospects. They do however show the start of a trend to rapidly increase the number of IMGs. One interesting statistic was that where DD works the proportion of doctors employed who were in their 20s fell by 11% in the five years between 2019-2023. Despite an expansion of medical school places. From what I hear it will fall still further in 2025. There didn't seem to be many jobs they, and those from earlier years, could apply to. Other movements like the increase in doctors in their 30s, the number from overseas and a large increase (59% over five years) in the numbers of ethnic minority doctors seems to confirm the F2 belief that jobs were being filled by overseas agencies and not advertised to them.
This thread constantly confuses two issues. A lack of training posts and a lack of jobs. Lots of stuff about most UK medical graduates not being good enough (or not having gone to a good enough medical school) to become consultants. The lack of training posts is a given. In DDs deanery so few get through that it has become a much longer term aspiration, not something you normally achieve during F2. Instead you need short term contracts to give you the time to take part in the arms race of exam marks and CV enhancements. It is the lack of short term contracts that is killer, and causing many to accept that if they want to be doctors they have to go overseas. And presumably causing them to be negative about working for the NHS.
Headline data rarely tells the whole picture. To understand what is actually going on you normally need to drill down. What seems clear is that the NHS makes little effort to retain or motivate staff, including those who are just coming to the end of F2 and should be the future backbone of a national health service. Access to training is a whole separate issue. But why, when the statistics show that there is widespread overseas recruitment should it be so difficult for F2s to just find a job.
- The off-putting numbers applying for each position is one obvious hurdle.
- The timing is another. It appears that a host of F3 jobs appeared two weeks before F2s faced unemployment. Why so late. An employer wanting to retain good staff should surely recognise that good staff also want certainty. (Though the trend to adding NHS Foundation experience as a job requirement is a positive step.)
- NHS bank. DD should not have to wait over a month from first application to be signed up, especially when a department is keen to give her as many shifts as she wants, and not be able to find out why there is such a delay. My London neighbour confirms this is par for the course, whilst the MNetter I quoted earlier tells me that in her son's Trust you have to wait three months after leaving F2 before you are allowed to apply for NHS Bank. The NHS clearly don't understand that recently finished F2s need continuity of employment and NHS Bank is the obvious way to deliver this.
- This weird reliance on agencies. DD is now being put forward for two jobs. One a good regular hours general medicine type role, perfect for providing the time to prepare for a training application. The second, her dream F3 role in the area she wants to specialise in. She will know within the week for almost immediate start. The agency are confident, given her solid experience and strong references that she will get one if not both. So why does it have to be last minute. Why do you need to be signed up to a private agency (in the UK or overseas) to have a shot at attractive NHS roles.
So a perfectly capable doctor who is more likely to find a developmental role, that can be the launch pad for a training application in Australia. Her friend who also plans to go to Australia did apply for training but did not get through. Others who have already left. They wanted careers, not necessarily leading to being a consultant. Just good jobs in medicine. All the evidence, including the statistics that demonstrate the massive growth in numbers of overseas qualified doctors and the increasing numbers of UK trained doctors going overseas, is that the NHS prefers to recruit from Africa and Asia and has little interest in retaining those that qualified under their own system.
If you were one of the post-F2s how would you respond to the survey?
(An irrelevant anecdote. The LSE always came bottom of student satisfaction surveys, so much so that the Government had to abandon the idea of student satisfaction as a possible metric when considering grant funding. Why? In part because it had become a matter of pride for LSE students that they went to the "toughest" University in Britain and thrived. Online surveys only tell you so much. To be meaningful they need to be backed up with further in depth research to help confirm causology.)