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.

Well this thread went gammon very fast. All the doctors I work with from overseas have excellent English and the patients love them.

Also as above the qualifications as frequently faked or purchased by various means.

I'm a consultant. My (brilliant) FY2 is leaving the country. She is someone who went "straight through" training. Uni at 18, various awards and prizes at medical school. Great reports from FY1 and has been a great trainee in my department. Reliable, sensible, patients really like her.

But the competition ratios to get into core training are wild, and because of the standardised process she simply won't get enough points on the form. She's 24. So no she hasn't had the chance to get a PhD, complete a RCT etc etc. She won't get enough points on the generic application form. She's competing against people who are already practicing at a senior level abroad who are willing to do these jobs. It doesn't feel fair as core training, in my view, is meant to be designed to train up senior doctors not as a step down for existing consultants.

I think if we went back to more local recruitment with proper interviewing rather than generic forms some of this could be mitigated. I say this as someone who works with lots of excellent colleagues from abroad. I don't think it's discrimination to prioritise candidates who have trained locally. I'd rather work with someone from abroad who had been fully trained from Yr 1 of medical school in the UK, rather than a brit who had trained entirely abroad.

Thanks for the info.

So the OP post at the top of the thread is misleading. The Drs recruited overseas are full trained and specialised, It is not a case of UK trained Drs can't get jobs because of others being brought in.

It's underfunding of training positions at teaching hospitals. And given the time taken for students to go through med school, this is an underfunding problem/poor planning that started years ago.

I can see the issue, but it appears not to be an issue caused by overseas recruiting.

In manufacturing terms, it's an unbalanced production line. In manufacturing, the usual solution for such a scenario is to change the process to a pull system, rather than a push, than it is at the moment.

And this makes me wonder about the OP, and others, saying F2s and F3s are considering moving abroad to complete their training. Australia is mentioned above.

But if Australia does have a more balanced production line, with all input and outputs numbers of the various phases alligned, would a sudden influx of foreign educated F2 and F3's not knock their process out of kilter ? Where UK F2s would potentially knock Australian F2s off their own process ?

Agree with this. My DH in hospital a few years ago was trying to explain to a nurse that there was no.point in her trying to take blood from a certain vein. It just wouldn't work. He was having blood taken 3 or 4 times a day and knew this for definite, and knew what vein could be used. She wandered off and wrote in his notes that he was refusing blood tests. He missed that blood test completely and it wasn't until a second nurse queried it hours later that the issue was resolved The first nurse simply didn't understand him, nor he her. English was definitely not her first language, and in this instance led to my DH's care being compromised.

Moving away from a corrupt country to further your career is admirable though surely? I don't think a psychiatric nurse is any more likely to be 'corrupt' if they happened to be born in Nigeria.

It's true that nearly all the ones I had were from there or a couple from Zimbabwe. I was in for five weeks with RMN 1:1 so that's a lot of nurses. They were all bank nurses as I wasn't in a psych ward.

All good, professional. Some more friendly and outgoing than others. But I didn't have suspicions their country of origin was affecting their honesty.

It’s not racist to say that if tax payers pay to train doctors (or any other profession for that matter), those tax payers should benefit from the training they’ve paid for.

it’s also not racist to be concerned for other countries who pay to train doctors, and for those doctors to then emigrate to another another country to work (in this case the U.K.)

How is it not a problem with overseas recruitment?

We have 13000 training places. 12000 applications from UK grads and another 20000 from overseas.

Australia rather sensibly give priority to their own trainees. Overseas candidates get anything that can't be filled.

You can’t stop people moving about.

I think basically every other country in the world gives priority to their own medical graduates. So it certainly is possible.

so write to your mp's

It’s simply bonkers we don’t.

Why can’t we instil this now and offer golden handshakes to experienced uk staff to stay on past retirement and oversea training lower qualified UK staff until we catch up.

Yup. Seems to me the issue is under funding of training hospital places. Poor long term planning/ funding.

But the OP unfortunately mixed up their data sets, leading to the gammons to conclude what gammons always conclude.

I think this is maybe a good example of why it is so important to present data on a like for like basis. To avoid potentially wrong conclusions being made.

Anecdotally, the conflation issue is something seen on likes of GB news and Fox on a fairly regular basis.

I feel like I’m missing something. What’s the benefit of employing people from say, Nigeria, if there are people here who want the jobs? Surely we don’t pay them less? And if they need sponsoring, that must cost us?

is it the lack of training spaces?

F1 and F2 doctors have protected jobs for 2 years as they are still in training. They join a 2 year foundation programme with 6 rotations. Once F2 is finished then the problems start as too few jobs for resident doctors and it’s a disgrace

So many posters are right, but when people write about their concerns about Third World doctors and lack of training/corruption there, we need to look closer to home. In the early 1990s prior to EU membership Romania/Bulgaria and the Baltic States it was possible to obtain medical degrees by the following:

• pay the tutor directly to pass you
• pay your mate to sit your exam for you
• just buy a diploma (literally pay money to the institution to sell you a diploma) - i.e. you register, show up a few times, don't attend regularly, pay full fees and you get a diploma (full-fee paying students subsidise non-fee paying ones)

Now these doctors are free to work anywhere in the world. I am hoping that with the EU membership now the situation changed for the better.

That’s really great to hear. I’ve also encountered excellent overseas HCPs as a patient/relative, and worked with many as an NHS employee.

Does the fact your hospital has got it right mean that risks to patient safety (because of language and communication issues) don’t exist elsewhere?

This

I’m a uk trained nurse, with many years clinical experience. I’ve got a masters plus several other specialist qualifications; I loved nursing and was good at my job. I took a career break a couple of years ago to nurse my terminally ill husband myself. I’d like to look to returning to nursing, but our local trusts have all frozen recruitment, now for a considerable amount of time. Posts are strictly only open to internal applicants and they just move people around and don’t backfill vacancies. Our local hospices have also frozen recruitment and are making people redundant due to increasing costs and the NI increase. The NHS paid for my training and need experienced nurses like me, especially in the area in which I worked. It’s ridiculous and such a waste of money.
In our area, nearly qualified nurses have been told not to register with the NMC yet (the nursing regulator) as they won’t be able to get a job at the moment.

I too have extensive experience of the NHS in several London teaching hospital both as an inpatient with multiple surgeries and admissions, follow ups, scans, physio and referrals up to my eyeballs. I have been treated by doctors and nurses from all over the world and never once had a communication problem.

I’m an NHS AHP. This has been going on for decades now in all medical professions. The public never seem to grasp this concept as the government continually put more money into restructuring and boast about their financial input. Yet fail to increase medical staff. We now have a quarter of the buildings and a quarter of the staff, compared to 20 years ago. The buildings we have are ancient and falling down. We have multiple apprentice and assistant staff, who we then are responsible for signing off their work (on top of our own clinical load. I’m all for having these staff, but in addition to sufficient medical staff. Not instead of!

when the Tories stopped the bursaries in 20216. Number training in AHP courses plummeted. The university closest to us has now stopped teaching their course. We’re stuffed for getting new graduates now as we’re geographically challenged for recruitment and retention of staff.

People are living with multiple chronic conditions now. We have to prioritise those with the highest need and have now discharged thousands of low risk patients who no longer meet criteria for treatment. They now all risk becoming high need patients due to lack of early intervention.

The strikes are about lack of staff AND lack of jobs. The pay part is because we’re expected to do the work of 4 people now. Terms and conditions of pay have decreased the worth of everyone’s position.

There’s so much more I could say but it’s just depressing.

I’m an old school lefty liberal remainer. I don’t care at all where people are from, or what they look like. I do care about poor patient care and experience as a result of mis-communication.

If you think that makes me a “gammon” (nice bit of ageism and classism there, btw) then I can’t help you.

The root cause of the NHS’s troubles is under-funding, political meddling over countless years, and specifically in this case lack of planning for and investment in post FY2 training places.

Ignoring communication problems as a risk to patient safety is ableist and ageist.

Well, according to the OP and other posters, docs are fleeing the UK to other climes. esp ozz.

So maybe checking Australian ( or Polish) press might be a good idea?

I know Australia has had a lot of anti immigration protest etc going on.

It’s the same for newly qualified nurses lots have £100k debt and have gone back to the jobs they did before going to uni. The unions are involved but nothing has been done, this has been going on for the last few years.

i am often full of inspiration to our foreign doctors, they have to work particularly hard to be accepted by colleagues and patients, overcoming many hurdles to get where they are today.