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.

Generally this government is really crap at workforce planning aren't they?

Agreed. I’m sure foreign doctors are clinically good but as a patient it can be really stressful trying to communicate with someone whose English isn’t fluent - that goes for nurses etc too.

What planning related to those part way through degrees in medicine do you think they have been able to do in just over a year?

Ok this is obviously bad that medics that the taxpayer has helped train can’t find a position, but your post lacks a vital detail.

Of the 20,060 immigrant medics, how many of them are newly qualified doctors that would be competing directly with you SS for a position?

The medics we are importing (drs and nurses) are often from countries that can ill afford to lose their medical staff. Thing is though - it means they object less. My sister is a physiotherapist of 40yrs experience. She lived in Jersey for 8 yrs, came back and no NHS vacancies so she worked at a private hospital. Now she has been trying for 5-6 yrs to get back into NHS but they won’t take ex-private. On the other hand, they are happy to import. Almost half NHS staff are not home-grown, yet we have a graduate employment crisis.

It hasn’t been caused by this government.

Even if you’re right, it simply creates a career progression bottleneck elsewhere

Yes, this.

When the medical school place your DSS was created, and for most of his studies, the tories were in charge.

Labour could make improvements but it will take some years to filter through.

Irrelevant. Answer the question.

@MikeRafone this sounds like a clear assessment of the situation, thank you

Best doctors I've encountered recently were not UK trained, which meant they weren't institutionalised by the NHS culture. They were paying close attention, interested in learning about the whole patient, not just their area of focus, and took responsibility. Our training system may be the envy of the world but I really don't know why when I see the results. And the problems are much more about culture and attitudes than lack of funding, and that cuts right through the NHS.

Well I can only speak from experience, two deliveries, cancer, continuing issues with eye and scan surveillance means I’m in hospital 4+ times/year. All the nurses have problems speaking clearly, the radiographers are all home-grown so no language issues, all the doctors non-fluent and hard to communicate with. Ao my LIVED EXPERIENCE is that it is highly stressful situation made far more stressful because of the communication issue. That is my experience and to tell me to shut ip is patronising.

It is true. Doctors no longer want their kids to do medicine.

Its terrible this is happening. Its a total lack of joined uo thinking. We literally are forcing our 'brightest and best" to leave the country.

Our whole policy should be about growing and retaining talent within this country. Not stealing doctors from poorer countries that most likely need to keep them.

I thought that a big reason why there aren’t enough NHS job vacancies is because the government doesn’t fund the NHS enough? Isn’t that a factor? We all feel it’s harder to get an appointment nowadays (eg for seeing a GP, or us being on a long waiting list to see a consultant) - if the government put the funding there for paying more doctors then there would be more roles for medical graduates to apply for, plus patients would be happier.
(I’m happy to be corrected /explained to by
someone who knows more about this than my simplistic knowledge!)

The problem is the lack of training places. Not enough. This means trainee uk doctors not being able to train. It also means not enough trained doctor so need to recruit trained doctors from abroad.

ludicrous.

No, it is for places on the training schemes to become a cobsultant or GP as well as for jobs after that. Government doesn't want to pay for doctors

There are plenty of job vacancies for doctors (foreign doctors apply for them) but there aren't enough training posts for newly qualified drs. Training posts need to be increased but until we train more UK graduates, someone needs to fill in the current positions for trained drs which can't be filled by the new graduates.

Just to mention, I had a really really bad experience with a male doctor from a different culture years ago. I still think about it sometimes and regret not reporting him somewhere at the time and I wonder if he's still working with patients... He was trained in the UK though but how was he allowed to come near any patients - I genuinely don't know.

She's right. It is racism. The automatic assumption that because a HCP comes from overseas that they're inferior. Which is ridiculous because the UK puts the checks in place when we recruit them.

I've read this morning about the requirements within the Nigerian nurse training system. 7 or 8 years of training to become a nurse. Requirement to pass IELTS to work in the UK (English language tests).

I've had a lot of medical treatment/surgery over the last 15 years (cancer). The ONLY poor quality staff I've encountered have been white British staff. The nurse that ignored me post op after a 13 hour surgery, leaving me crying and in pain. The doctor in A&E that dismissed my problem, which was genuine and then turned into a much bigger problem, requiring many other treatments costing a lost more. Both British trained.

Every surgeon I had was non-British. And I'm here 15 years after a very high grade, aggressive cancer, because they saved my life.

I think you can dispense with the second half of your sentence and put a full stop after crap.

But it's been the same for successive governments. Health and health planning should be absolutely removed from party politics. It's FAR too important. All that's being done is tinkering around the edges of a system that's utterly utterly broken, yet no government has the balls to take it on, convinced as they are that the great British public is ideologically wedded to the NHS, when actually it's that significant numbers of the great British public are ideologically wedded to receiving endless free healthcare they don't have to pay anything. And so it gets worse...and worse...and worse

It should be removed from the realm of politics and put into the hands of actual experts, and a more sustainable system put in place. But it won't because after eighty years, it's far too late for that. So going forward, people who want to be treated, alongside the high taxes that are levied to fund it, will have to also pay sky high insurance premiums for private healthcare. Except...there's still the staffing issue. So what do we do? Cross our fingers, look after ourselves and pray for good health I guess.

It’s not the government who doesn’t want to pay for doctors - it’s the general public.

We’ve had endless threads on here around the budget, moaning about the amount of tax.

These training places are an investment in the future of our young would be doctors and the NHS, but they need to be paid for somehow. It is politically difficult for Labour to impose tax rises, so how are they meant to be paid for?

Nowt to do with racism - communicating with patients ie fluency in English is a job safety essential.

If you can’t understand your patients or colleagues, the people you’re shitting on most are locals who don’t have English as first language.

Translators work globally with English. Lots of Londoners need them.

Patient safety is non-negotiable. Avoidable deaths rising now in hospitals because no one can identify patient language - we don’t want to enable the doctor to start finishing people off too.

I think this debacle is disgusting. Our government(s) seem incapable of investing in our young people at every level or predicting future needs and trends. I am sad for the newly qualified doctors and nurses who are having to leave their country and I am even more sad for our country to be losing them.

Surely the government could fix this problem extremely easily by only allowing those currently without the right to reside in the uk to apply for roles as doctors and nurses if the job had first been advertised to those already here and no suitable candidates had been found.

The fact the BMA is a mess doesn't stop the government from doing this.

What am I missing?

That's what I said. FY2 are not full drs yet.

But the data for Drs from abroad, that is full post specialisation drs.

They are not the same thing.