Healthcare (doctors, nurses etc) is particularly bad. There have been a few threads on AIBU including a current one on F2s not being able to find work. (And the problem goes on further up the training path.)
The basic problem seems to relate to the lifting of the Resident Market Labour Market Test in about 2022, with a previous decision to add a very large number of health service roles to a list of professions with skills shortages. (@mumsneedwine is on top of the detail as always.)
I am not sure how this affects F1. There have always been a fair number of IMGs (graduates of international medical schools) doing F1. In the past they picked up slots that others did not want. I once met the head of a medical school in Penang who said he could place good students in the UK but never in London. Now merit (points) are no longer part of the allocation process I assume IMGs have an equal shot at the very sought-after research-heavy deaneries. (Especially valuable given the real shortage of training places and the fact that these are now fully open to international competition leading to an arms race in exam scores and CV enhancements.)
I do not know how open F1 is to IMGs. If the NHS is still taking them in equal/increased numbers despite the increase in medical school places, they will presumably be on equal terms when it comes to allocations. Rather than filling spare slots. If this is the case, and the number of available F1s is higher than the number of positions, then there will be some UK medical schools graduates who will not have jobs.
Post F2 is a war zone. DD only knows of two F2s in her whole Deanery who have training for next year, one of which is for GP. F3 type roles (short term contracts, Fellowships, house jobs) are open to full international competition, attracting hundreds of applicants, and more likely to go to someone with experience than a post-F2 who needs that experience. There is obviously Australia, but with the new problem that if you go not only are you rightly behind Australian residents when it comes to popular jobs and training but it is now very hard to come back.
And it goes on. Further up the training path those on the ladder then have to compete with applicants coming off 2+2 schemes where, say, Doctors can take half their specialist training in India and then take up training posts in the UK.
So years and years of having to work and study hard, and move to where the work is, with a constant threat of unemployment. Whilst your peers have been able to establish their careers, settle, start families and so on.
DD has nothing come August. She did not apply for training during F2, in part because she had very busy rotations (nights in five out of six) and is in a Deanery still using the old contract so less support and no personal development time. Just as well as she has realised she much prefers another specialisation over the one she always thought she wanted to do. She is likely to sign up for NHS bank and hope for enough zero hours short term work to pay her way. This may be difficult as she will have to pay her own insurance and the person regularly locuming in the department she would want to work in and where she would be welcome, failed to get onto training so it may be two of them now competing for the same amount of work. The headlines about Doctors driving ubers or working in other zero hour jobs are true.
The other thread has evolved into a discussion about lobbying, so collecting bullet points about issues (so many) and targets. You can only write to your own MP, but there are plenty of others, health journalists, people involved in NHS policy making etc who should be aware. I bumped into Aphra Brandeth MP at an event and kindly asked if I could bend her ear, only to discover that a constituent had been to her surgery that morning worried about a doctor daughter who has got stuck in Australia unable to return. She has started submitting MPs questions on the issue. I understand there is another MP active on Twitter also covering part of the same issue. .
The Government/NHS need to:
- carry out a quick survey of current F2s to find out what is happening on the ground, and not just assume that they are leaving the profession or for Australia because they want to, and so work out the solution is not to redouble international recruitment efforts or further limit job opportunities by increasing the number of PAs. They might do the same for newly graduating medics. .
- Take important entry level roles and training (nurses as well as doctors) off the skills shortage list, helping ensure that there are opportunities for those already in the UK (this includes doctors from overseas who have come to the end of the contracts that brought them over here, and who are possibly struggling the most to find something new.) Or review the lifting the the RMLT.
- Look at some of the immigration settlement incentives, exams exceptions, agency support and expedited career paths offered to doctors applying from overseas and ensure that there is at least a level playing field for those already in the UK. (We are the only comparable country that do not give preference to residents.)