Newly trained doctors-you need to know this

[2020Raquet]

DSS3 is about to be a newly qualified FY2 doctor along without about 8,000 from his cohort (number who qualified this year). There are about 1000 jobs for them to apply for in the NHS this year. So we, the tax payer have paid an average of £250,000 to £327,009 to train these doctors over the past 7-9 years and 87% will not have a job.

A simple google search (appreciate that not be the most accurate, so happy to be corrected if based on facts) show that 20,060 doctors immigrated to the U.K. in 2024.

DSS3 is emigrating because he has little other choice.

The doctors strikes are not based on money, but the fact that they come out of uni with £100’s of £1,000’s of debt in a job apparently vital in the U.K., but with no job prospects!!

AIBU to believe the system has failed.

why would you want to raise concerns?

What can be done or is it beyond fixing?

Did you read the article linked?

In a half-hearted effort to head off the strike without conceding on pay, Health Secretary Wes Streeting did offer an additional 1,000 specialty training posts this year, and to increase the number of additional training posts from 1,000 to 2,000 over the next three years: but that inadequate offer has now been withdrawn.

@Fl0w3rP0w3r

"And there you go- the racism accusations"

We see you, so obvious.

Dangerous Dr's are not colour specific

It’s awful. I’m a consultant. One of our F3s ( probably the most talented of her year too) has been doing locum jobs this year but is struggling to get even locum work.
She has chosen not to pay her GMC and indemnity fees for the coming year and to do a shelf stacking job at Tesco for £1 less per hour until Christmas but without the stress of searching for shifts/ night work/ worrying about patients etc. She will travel in the new year and consider moving to Australia / New Zealand for work if she can’t get a job next August .

So more training posts?

It’s absolutely horrendous op. Quite a few from my son’s year are interesting in studying medicine, so I hope they are aware. I guess there’s always an option to work abroad it seems crazy they can’t get employment in the UK.

You really don’t

Of course dangerous doctors aren’t colour specific however poor English and communication difficulties are added risks and complications however unpalatable that may sound.

The UK medical training system is envied globally. As a tax payer I’d like to see it kept here.

Isn’t she stuck paying something to the GMC though?

@Fl0w3rP0w3r

"however unpalatable that may sound" or racist perhaps? smh.

Edited a long post to summarise: it's simply rubbish all round

This isn’t true though. Foundation doctors are still training. There’s not enough specialist places for them to go into due to lack of funding, so the competition is fierce. The doctors coming in from overseas are reg and consultant posts which we have a serious shortfall in. The two are not the same thing.

So if you’re receiving poor care very much tied up with language/ communication complexities what do you suggest patients do?

I mean all of this said one of the stupidest girls I knew at school (properly stupid) is now a consultant at a teaching hospital after starting medicine as a second degree thanks to a dubiously conceived Access to Medicine course so I guess maybe we are screwed across multiple metrics.

You are correct in the first part that F2s are still in training, but at the end of their Foundation 2 year period immediately after graduating from university, there are huge bottlenecks to get into specialty training.

The BMA wrote to the government recently to point out that having a PhD and having published medical articles was still not enough to get to the shortlisting cut off to get an interview for IMT (internal medicine training), which is meant to be directly after F2.

No - you voluntarily withdraw from the registry ie become not active and can’t work as a doctor but keep your number .

Yep! It's been like this for some time unfortunately, ones that are in the NHS struggle to progress due to lack of jobs and end up staying at whatever point they are at for ages. Same with nurses, we train them yet there is very minimal jobs available

Have British born doctors never caused harm? Or it only the forrins?

Ah I thought they had made it tricky to get back on but I’ve just looked and it seems straightforward.

Why are they allowing so many people to train as doctors if there aren’t enough jobs?

Because we need them. It’s nuts

No you are wrong . Doctors are still training until they become a consultant/ GP or associate specialist/ SAS. Registrars or Locally employed ‘middle grade doctor’ / specialty doctors which all mean the same thing ARE trainees. Core training posts ( after foundation training ) is where the worst bottle neck is )

Plenty of these posts are filled by doctors who are not UK resident and did not go to UK medical school or UK foundation training . This is because of the level playing field in applications. A doctor from overseas who has 5 years of experience might compete against a UK trainee who has done 2 years of foundation training for a core training post and get the job as more qualified.

The biggest issue is that there are not nearly enough core training posts for the UK foundation doctors coming though let alone doctors from around the world .

From what I understand there has been a surge in retirements which means far fewer consultants available to train junior staff. The bottleneck is the training. So you simultaneously have a shortage of senior doctors and an excess of junior doctors. The surge in retirements was caused by capping the pension pot and the increase was to deal with this issue.

Neither is it in disciplines beyond medicine. My son, first at Oxford, Prize for an MSc at LSE, PhD at Cambridge swiftly converted to a 4* Monograph, has had to get a job overseas for the opportunity to bid successfully in his field. HE is being decimated across the Board, but other disciplines just don't whinge as well.

The junior dr's who are striking over money are, I doubt, doing it for compromised F2s.

It is not racist to suggest that mis-communication between doctor and patient presents a significant risk to patient safety.

If those doctors speak idiomatic English and are fully aware of UK standards of medical practice there’s obviously no problem.