To finally agree with a junior doctors strike

[Horsehow]

Junior doctors have decided to strike as they are being overlooked for jobs / training posts which are instead given to international applicants. I’ve always abhorred their money grabbing strikes in the past, but support this one 100%. UK doctors should be recruited where possible, and international graduates only turned to where we cannot find a suitable recruit in the UK.

Lovely lunch over looking those gleaming spires. UKGs priority is happening soon. Every doctor here wants it right now. Consultants who care about their staff are the majority. Thankfully.

You can only come back to practise if someone gives you a job. That decision is at present based on merit, and your Bulgarian graduate probably has roughly the same chance of success as a graduate of, for example, the University of Cumbria medical school, which also has low entry requirements.

Under the old RLMT, which is mentioned not infrequently by one or two posters, any Bulgarian graduate would be given priority over the best candidates from 170 other countries.

How do you feel about that?

That is not the case. The UK is no longer in the EU. Remember Brexit?

So medical graduates from EU Universities will not longer have preferential treatment. Brexit ended that privilege so they will be judged as IMGs.

Not sure what will happen to UK citizens that go to EU universities. Maybe they will have to do the PLAB.

Small matter of Brexit makes the RMLT reference obsolete.

I believe that doctors who aren’t able to cut the mustard for UK med school entry and go abroad to qualify in a less competitive setting shouldn’t be eligible to apply for UK speciality training positions. You have referenced studies stating that prior academic attainment is a key factor in determining potential to progress as a doctor. If that is such a key indicator, why not make it part of the selection criteria for training pathways? If that were well publicised that would surely act as a deterrent to less academic people applying to med even if some med schools will take them, or at least give them a reality check. But how on earth do you capture that from a plethora of international examination systems with differing levels of robustness. Also context of grades achieved would need to be considered to make this anything approaching fair.

I may be able to help with your anxiety.

There is a hierarchy of evidence. At the lowest level there is expert opinion. I am not an expert on workforce planning, but if I regurgitate the opinion of someone who is, for example Partha Kar - because he is the Medical Workforce Race Equality Standard lead for NHS England - then that counts as evidence. Peer reviewed modelling in the Lancet or a retrospective analysis of workforce behaviour by the GMC are at a higher level.

Nowhere in this evidential hierarchy is there a level that readily accommodates uninformed opinion and innuendo. There is therefore no need to worry if people who ""say" they are NHS doctors" do not "see sense" when you have set yourself up as the arbiter of what constitutes sense.

It is perfectly normal.

PLAB.

Or maybe British candidates who can't cut the mustard for entry to the best UK medical schools shouldn't be eligible to apply for speciality training?
Prior attainment is de facto part of the selection for training pathways. The brightest candidates will do best at FY 1&2, and then they will go on to training. The problem for all the angry parents on here that they believe all of the candidates are 'awesome' even if they scraped into some embarrassing med. school with poor A levels.

So what about the ones who score perfect grades in prior attainment and didn’t choose Oxbridge or London because they preferred other schools or locations. There are plenty of them around the country. Should they be excluded from speciality training too? Or would you cast the net wider than that?

@mumsneedwine 😂

This does not apply to my son. 4A* A levels. 4 offers from top universities. Chose the university he wanted to go to for a variety of reasons.

Priority for UKMGs for specialty training. This ridiculous situation needs to end.

Yep same situation here. I’m intrigued.

Who mentioned Oxbridge or London? Prior attainment and type of medical school are predictors of future performance, in many ways. For example, postgraduate exam performance, training problems and GMC sanctions.

Problems mostly arise in graduates from post 2000 universities.

A poster on this thread mentioned pompous opinions which I think is a great description of some poster's views..

Why not UK MLA?

@Scotiasdarling you clearly have no idea how speciality recruitment works 😂. Nothing to do with merit or being a great doctor. Do some research and look at the points system - apparently presenting at a conference or having the cash to do a weird Masters are what makes you a good doctor. Or the MSRA, an exam for GPs, that has 2 Psych questions, but is solely used to recruit psychiatrists.

@PurpleFairyLights there are some upset humans now that UKGs are getting priority. Weird to be unhappy about employment of UK trained staff. V v weird.

Good idea but there would also need to be an OSCE type exam as well.

'Embarrassingly poor' med school ? Where would this be that you can get in with poor A levels ? Plymouth need AAA*. Othered need AAA. Where are you talking about ? Newcastle who take BBB for Partners ?

My partner attended a Russell Group university medical school, not an "embarrassing" one, whatever that means. He and his wider friendship group all had a real uphill battle to get into specialty training and most took more than one attempt - although they've all managed it now.

When I had an operation recently, the consultant anaesthetist was talking about what a shame it is that newer doctors now have to go through this - although as this thread shows, plenty who didn't have to struggle through insane competition ratios are happy to pull up the ladder behind them!

PLAB provided the opportunity to titrate the pass mark against applicant numbers. It would be much better to allow a clear pathway for high quality applicants than take steps to exclude them all.

The UKMLA cannot be used in this way, and it will be impossible to maintain the illusion that all medical schools are the same if it is an effective filter.

provided-past tense

Great post.

Every year the ratios get worse. In some specialties if you do over a certain amount of years doing Trust grade jobs in that specialty you start to lose points on your specialty training application.

Not pleasant to ladder pull

Yes if the argument for IMG access is simply to have the best doctors then surely it has to be a given that the entry criteria have to be level for all.

I think the UK should prioritise UKMGs and then IMGs can compete for the jobs not filled via written exams and OSCEs.

How can the UK know about the standards of medical degrees worldwide? Also UK unable to do DBS checks. The "best" doctors argument from some posters looks like smoke and mirrors to me.

There has also been concerns expressed regarding PLAB and CREST forms.

The top medical schools will add value. Those opting for other less well regarded medical schools won't get that added value even if their prior attainment equals that of their Oxbridge/ Imperial/ UCL etc peers.

Oxford has long taken a particularly hard line on prior attainment. The GCSE threshold has stood alone as a tough filter. So it's not merely four A* at A level (usually sciences) but for almost all offerees a clean sweep of GCSEs too (indicating excellence across the board: a valuable attribute for doctors).

My DC had a clean sweep of 9s too and a top 1% UCAT. There are many high achievers scattered across the country, not just in Oxbridge and London. We were talking about the significance of prior attainment as that is claimed to be a significant indicator of success.

If your high achieving DC chose not to go to a top medical school then he also chose to forfeit the added value that comes with that. But he's obviously significantly more likely to progress than his peers in the same medical school with much less impressive prior attainment.

Ah these 'top' medical schools are back. Have they been named ? Has the GMC been informed about the sub standard ones ? Nope. Because it's all a load of rubbish.

But it makes some people feel superior to believe it so I'll leave them to their delusions.