Ideal university for Medicine

[Kayt79]

DS is in Y12, and set on Medicine. He's been to a few open days already, but until he's done his UCAT next summer it's impossible to know where will be realistic to apply.

So, just out of interest, and putting aside entry requirements and "prestige", which would be your ideal universities for Medicine, based on the overall student experience?

Digging around online to see what's possibly added to the explosion of IMGs, I found this in an article online from March 2024.

An Indian news paper states "UK’s National Health Service (NHS) will recruit 2,000 doctors from India on a fast-track basis as part of an initiative to address the acute shortage of medicos in the country, industry sources said.

The NHS will conduct postgraduate training for the first batch of doctors, who then will be deployed at hospitals in Britain after 6 to 12 months of training. These doctors will be exempted from the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) examination upon completion of the training programme, they said."

Not sure if anyone's come across this? Why do this when UK trained doctors such as @mumsneedwine and @Needmoresleep 's DDs are available?

Thank you. Fast track for them with exemptions and guaranteed training.

Yet Haffdonga's son is struggling to get an interview for a F3 type role for which he will be well qualified, because of the sheer volume of applicants. DD knows former colleagues would be very happy to see her appointed to one of the two local locum/F3 jobs in her desired and mainstream speciality which she knows are coming up. And because she knows about them she will be able to find out when applications open so could get something in, perhaps by taking a day off. But as Haff suggests it seems to be increasingly common for there to be so many applications that the widow shuts after about 8 hours. And because of the volume and then the need to follow selection criteria including additional points to people with, say, gold medals and publications, it is very unlikely that any panel would be able to appoint her anyway. As a result she has decided not to bother, go to Australia, gain experience, perhaps a few points, and pass the exams.

It is particularly tough for those kids encouraged into medicine by various access programmes, in part with the thinking that this was a way to train local people who might want to stay in hard to recruit areas (Highlands and Islands etc) My observation is that doctors children are surviving better than others, as they understand the game better and have access to wider networks so have a better knowledge of what might be coming up. Middle class kids from London can survive by coming home, living rent free and and picking up casual shifts in A&E or in psych hospitals. (My GPs Oxbridge educated DC did just that, and the dad is delighted that the DC now has a year long F3 job. Just clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder is an achievement.)

And it's not just India. The newly arrived doctors DD seems to be working with are not from India but trained in a variety of African countries or places like Bulgaria. And yes they may be being exploited as their employment is often precarious and day to day, but at least they have jobs. The current F2s won't.

Hi @mumsneedwine and @Needmoresleep needless to say my F2 DS is in same boat. Has done the MSRA and is hoping to get on GP training which wasn't what he set out do do at start at F1 but doesn't want to waste his 20s applying for a consultant post (his words!). Not prepared to move to Australia, so will locum next year and see what happens.

Hi, after so many years I feel I know you, Haffdonga and others. Its been a long old journey and I don't think any of us expected this outcome.

Has he managed to find a regular locum job or will he need to rely on casual bank work? My understanding is that the standard year long locum jobs have dried up first because they are open to international competition (see Haffdonga's post) second because many, including those in GPs surgeries, are now earmarked for PAs, and third because there is a backlog of F2 graduates from previous years who are still trying to get on training.

I hope that your DS can be the one bit of good news .

It is extraordinary.

Hi @Needmoresleep he will be relying on bank work but his rent is pretty low currently. A lot of his peer are not applying this year they are all having a year out for one reason or another. Looking on the positive he seems to think the MSRA went quite well, despite not doing much revision. We shall see I am just hoping his natural ability at situational judgement will see him through to getting on the GP Training. Hes not worried but nothing seems to worry him, I am!

@Needmoresleep @mumsneedwine and the many others posting here: You will note in my previous posts that I mentioned my DF, an IMG. She stayed with us in the run up to her PLAB 2 exam to do her PLAB mocks in the UK itself before attending the actual PLAB 2 exam. Before coming over, she had passed her PLAB 1 online with the same UK academy which boasts having extremely high PLAB pass rate for IMGs. This was less than 2 years ago.

My insistence on IMGs sitting the same UK MLA as UK graduates stems from what I said in my previous posts plus this. At the UK academy she attended in person to do her mocks, she and her cohort of potential IMGs were told nearing the PLAB exam the areas to focus on from the PLAB 2 specification. Apparently a number of these areas were guaranteed to come up in the upcoming UK PLAB 2 exam a few days later. After picking her up from the exam, I asked her if the questions did indeed come up and she said they did. She passed and moved to the UK with her young family as she was offered a job about 6 months later. DF is highly skilled and had over a decade of experience in her home country and would have passed without the 'exam tips'. I'm not sure how many of the hundreds attending the academy that week would have passed PLAB 2 that week without the 'exam tips.' I think this needs to be investigated for not just our DCs' sakes but also for patient safety! In any case, I think PLAB should not have been kept after the introduction of the new UKMLA. IMGs should be made to sit the same test and be rigourously tested just like our UK medical graduates. My eldest and his friends who are at different UK medical schools tell me that a number of their friends fail each year and have to resit or leave. As far as I am concerned, if anyone of them make it through and graduate I am confident that they have been rigourously tested enough to deserve a chance at postgraduate training in the UK rather than an IMG. No UK medical student is told what questions come up in advance of university medical exams . We need to stop relying on IMGs and give our hard working UK medical graduates a chance by prioritising them. It's the only fair way of doing things if both IMGs and UK grads are chasing the same postgraduate posts!

I've had some outstanding medical care in two foreign countries when I've lived there, one European, one not. Literally life saving twice, but also regular non emergency care. I've had some extremely mixed quality medical care ranging from outstanding to exceptionally poor/ incompetent in the UK. This is a separate point to the road block point. But I think we're deluding ourselves if we think all UK medical graduates are excellent or even competent and maybe need to be careful not to appear xenophobic. Obviously not all UK graduates will have what it takes to climb the ladder much beyond F2. No doubt plenty of IMGs will be at that same not wildly impressive level too. What does seem puzzling to me is the curious method of selection for progression. I'm not clear how it tests competency sufficiently to make the decisions it does.

No one is deluding themselves. I don't know if you are intending to come across as accusatory.

No one but no one is saying that all UK graduates are excellent. They are not. I Ditto IMGs. UK training has a real status and we will be attracting some of the best of the best. Equally I am sure most of our DC will be aware of some very weak IMGs who float around trusts, who everyone dreads working with and who probably should not be allowed to work unsupervised.

I do not understand your point about xenophobia.

In any given population there will be variations. Some UK based medical students will be really good, others less so. Scratch a hospital doctor hard enough and they will admit that some coming out of some medical schools are not very good at all. There seems to be a real fear of failing people, and there is scope for discussion about how cheat-proof online exams are, and the relative benefits of testing by exam or by OSCI. The UK system is also torn between merit and "equality" which is why students who come top of their year at Oxford are now finding themselves allocated remote rural placements rather than the London teaching hospital jobs they aspired to.

Then when it comes to decisions on who to interview for "F3" jobs, appraisals during F1 & F2 do not count for anything. Instead the NHS has determined that gold medals, Conference papers, and publications, no matter how obscure they might be, should play a greater role in deciding. There are some very focussed UK medical students who understand the game and start to collect points from the get-go. They leave others to get on with the group work whilst they get on with things that will contribute to their future career. They don't stay a minute beyond their F1 shift even if a handover is not complete etc, but they will have a full portfolio of "points" that will put them ahead of the queue when it comes to getting a job. Exceptions perhaps, but given the increasingly small number of UK graduates who are getting training places, they will make up an increasing percentage. Glittering careers in NHS management await them.

Onemorepiece that does not surprise me. DD has said that a lot of doctor recruitment in her Deanery is essentially organised by overseas agencies. Ie that the agencies prepare applicants and put them forward. The UK F2 won't have that support. No one helping them with their applications to help them maximise any points. No one tutoring them for exams and certainly not giving them questions in advance. No one trawling through new vacancy lists to ensure their application goes in. No one to help prepare them for interviews. Instead F2s are trying to balance long and chaotic hours on busy wards, gaining the experience and the strong appraisals that we (patients) actually want from our doctors.

I don't think anyone here came across as xenophobic, it is a genuine concern about the whole process which is stacked up against the UK graduates.
We know who is a good doctor and who is conscientious and hard working and it is really disappointing if these doctors do not get jobs! Leave alone their preferred deanery or speciality.

My eldest and his friends who are at different UK medical schools tell me that a number of their friends fail each year and have to resit or leave. As far as I am concerned, if anyone of them make it through and graduate I am confident that they have been rigourously tested enough to deserve a chance at postgraduate training in the UK rather than an IMG

My comment about quality was in not especially direct response to this Needmoresleep.

My comment about xenophobia was not in response to anything posted in particular but IMGs as well as PAs are being fairly well slammed on the medical threads and so I'm just saying actually there are some excellent ones and some pretty flaky UK graduates. In the interests of balance.

There is no balance. PAs are not doctors and need to stop pretending to be them. There are good PAs. They should not be operating on anyone. Or 'accidentally' prescribing drugs.

Many IMGs are great. But they have preference for jobs in their own countries, UK graduates don't have preference anywhere.

Not xenophobic, economic. We pay to train doctors so a waste of money not to employ them. Rubbish ones will get found out pretty quickly.

@AsTearsGoBy I think it's fair to expect that medical graduates trained in the UK should be given first refusal for postgraduate training posts in the UK. IMGs have a choice whether to come here, to train in their home countries or go anywhere else in the world. I am speaking out for our DCs that are choosing to train here and don't want to go overseas to pursue their medical career. They are being forced out overseas due to NHS recruitment procedures that are currently in place and poor workforce planning. If this is changed asap, our DCs might still have a chance to stay in the UK. Should home medical graduates not be prioritised ahead of IMGs? It happens everywhere else in the world! It's not a battle between IMGs and UK medical grads but I think their recruitment in the UK is disproportionate given the current availability and unemployment of UK trained medical graduates. We are only having this discussion as clearly it's having a devastating impact on our DCs who are about to graduate or have in the past few years graduated from medical school.

Yes OneMorePiece it certainly makes sense to me to give UK graduates priority for training posts for as long as they're at least as good quality as others applying. I'm not clear that the current system tests that properly. I'm also not in the least clear why more medical school places were created without thought to the graduating students' career progression. In fact it's such an obvious thing to have considered, it's almost impossible to believe that this problem is merely an oversight. But not all graduating students will have the ability to move further than F2, so some can't be surprised that it's not a foregone conclusion that they pick up a training post after F2 easily.

I have to say that I don't really see the issue with PAs, provided they don't introduce themselves to patients in a way which suggests that they're a doctor, for example by saying that they're a 'clinician'. That's just confusing to most laymen. But am I right that they need to have a first three or four year science degree plus the two year PA course? I'm not sure how far away from a five year medical course that is, tbh. I do feel a bit sorry for them collectively because they really seem to be hated.

Rubbish ones will get found out pretty quickly

mumsneedwine rubbish ones shouldn't be graduating from UK medical schools but they clearly do, and some very definitely do get found out. Unfortunately mostly not before they've caused harm. Sometimes very serious harm, and in the worst cases irreparable harm. There are some horrendous cases of clinical negligence hitting the courts all the time. I don't think it's safe to assume that all UK trained graduates are going to be good doctors and certainly not that they'd all make good registrars let alone consultants.

TBH, facts are lacking for a credible campaign although that might not stop the DM. There is a correlation between the increasing number of IMGs and ratio of applicants to training places from the NHS England FOI . However otherwise it is hearsay. You need numbers from at least one deanery for the ratio of UK to IMG successful training number candidates focussing on.some of the larger previously less competitive specialties (from 2020 to last year).

With regards FY3 posts, that information will need to be requested at a hospital local level. Unfortunately if the facts don’t back the hearsay, the workforce planning will continue to say more IMGs are needed because more FY2s are choosing to go abroad. @Needmoresleep ’’s DD is an example here. She may choose not to apply for the available locum jobs and therefore won’t be categorised as somebody who could not get a post in the UK.

PAs won’t be taking GP trainee posts, those are deanery controlled. However GP practices are independent businesses and are finding it harder to fund sufficient trained GP posts.

@AsTearsGoBy no you're wrong. Their first degree can be in English or homeothopy. They do 18 months PA stuff and that makes them the same as a GP with 10 years post qualifying experience. They are dangerous.

Reposted for clarity. 49% of appointed GPs last year were IMGs. Likely to be higher this year

Helpful ?

Are you absolutely positive that the first degree doesn't have to be Biological Sciences/ Biomedical Science or similar? Could you point me to unis where a humanities degree is all that's required for entry? I can't readily find one but I've only tried a couple.

@AsTearsGoBy there's this really great thing called Google. Believe me or don't, I know I'm right so you can do your own research (like I have).
I have to mark year 13 mocks so students who want to become doctors can get into medical school. To be unemployed in 7 years.

That increase won’t be significant by p value @mumsneedwine and is from an area which may attract less UK graduates.
Otherwise your graphs only show applicant ratios.

I type the question in and I'm given the answer that you do need a first degree in science. That was rather the point.

@AsTearsGoBy @mumsneedwine when I took my DC for a follow up hospital appointment last year, the nursing staff told me the wait wouldn't be too long as there were two doctors that day. My DC was seen by a PA who introduced herself as a PA. I was fine with this but horrified that the nursing staff were telling patients she was a doctor!! I wonder how often this happens!

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/30/physicians-associates-qualify-courses-degrees/

Google is v simple

The article is only available if one signs up. Perhaps it's just an alarmist article with little foundation. No idea because I can't see anything other than a headline.