So Doctor “ Beth “ Upton is off to pastures new , leaving a large ongoing bill for NHS Fife

[RhannionKPSS]

Dr Upton is off to Australia it seems, after creating a toxic situation for women in NHS Fife, wonder if Dr Upton is going to be working in “ Gender Services “ down under ?

I've said from the start that Fife failed both Upton and Sandie. I lost my initial sympathy for him when I learnt he'd been making notes of colleagues from the start. What he needed was to be told robustly by his supervisors not to be a prat - and if his medical colleagues had really believed he was a woman that is exactly what they would have done.

What he needed was to be told robustly by his supervisors not to be a prat - and if his medical colleagues had really believed he was a woman that is exactly what they would have done.

Ha! Indeed, wouldn't they just @anyolddinosaur , we need to look no further than how they treated Sandie.

As a non AusNZ doctor It’s not hard to get a job in Australia but it’s getting very hard to get on a training scheme. Absolutely the pay and conditions are better, but a lot of UK doctors eventually go back

Ts funny cause it is true

Absolutely! It would be "Woman! Know thy place!"

Things have changed.

The high levels of unemployment amongst young doctors in the UK, and the exponential growth of private medical schools in Eastern Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and Africa means that there is a worldwide shortage of entry level and training jobs. Patients in the UK and Australia are reasonably unusual in being willing to be seen/operated on by SHOs. In systems where there is an underdeveloped public health system, people who pay expect to be seen by a consultant.

Australia, unlike the UK, gives priority to their own residents, so the plum jobs go to them. There is a tradition of hiring from the UK, and the Australians seem to like our training and language skills, so it used to be easy for Brits to pick up year-long contracts. Essentially working holidays after 7/8 years of slog. It is still reasonably easy to get work in rural areas or in A&E, but competition for more popular career-building experience in major cities is tighter. DD managed to land one, and was told that they had caried out a lot of background research, and that only a third of her peers will not be Australian residents. She expects that half of these will have already worked in Australia for a year or two, as you have to have been working in Australia for a set number of years before you can be considered for training.

The issue now is how you then get back. In the UK and because we do not give priority to UK residents, even locally employed jobs in hard-to-recruit places and unpopular specialities are attracting hundreds of applicants. (As well as opening up our job market to worldwide competition Boris gave expedited family settlement rights to many categories of health workers, which has proved a major pull factor and which is what the current parliamentary immigration debate is about.) There are already quite a few young doctors who went out in the last 2/3 years and are now struggling to get back. DD plans to see how the land lies and if she wants to return, will save so she can afford to take a gap year/Masters to allow time to prepare for UK specialist exams. Sadly the GMC do not automatically recognise Australian specialist training and it can take years to get "equivalence" sorted, during which time you can only work locum contracts in the UK, so training there is only worthwhile if you plan to stay.

All of which is a long way of saying that it all depends on how good Beth is. The "special status" may help a little, but unless he is really good, with good practical skills and great references, he will probably spend the next year on A&E night shifts or in the outback, and finding that he has few other options until he has enough years in to qualify for resident status. It is very likely that we won't see Beth again, but more because the NHS career path is f**ked rather than anything around trans or the case.

Part of the equation will be the extent to which Beth's was able to gain an easier ride because of his "special status" and his Fife family connections and the extent to which this has affected his professional development and his skills acquisition. If he got on with it and rolled his sleeves up, fair play to him. However my understanding is that the first lesson you need to learn as an F1 is to get the nurses on your side.

Dr Beth Upton resurfaces in Australia - and is listed as a woman on medical register
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/dr-beth-upton-resurfaces-australia-37043507.amp

Despicable. No consideration at all that if a female patient requires or requests a female physician that they might be horrified to have Dr U come through the door.

I do love the Scottish Daily Express's refusal to pander to Upton's preferred pronouns. David Walker, the journalist concerned, was excellent in his reporting throughout the Sandy Peggie tribunal. Other journalists and media take note.

It is also in The Australian newspaper. Cannot report as I do not subscribe.

Archive link to the article from The Australian. It's a good article.

https://archive.ph/v80vU

Great quote from the CEO of the Women's Forum in the article from The Australian:
Ms Wong said Dr Upton was “not only male, he is a male who has openly disregarded women’s boundaries, privacy and consent”.

At least they're aware and pushing back.

Oh FFS. I know that we’re desperate for more doctors in Australia, and we particularly love UK doctors because the training and education is so similar, but are we that desperate?

Be interesting to find out how the local community there reacts to him.

Unfortunately he’ll be legally regarded as female in every way and for access to everything. Anything else would be discrimination and could result in legal action.

I thought he would have gone for Victoria not New South Wales. Victoria is the most trans friendly state and state government. I guess NSW had a suitable vacancy in Emergency medicine.

I feel sorry for women patients because he said, under oath, that he would treat them whether or not they wanted to be treated by a man, and it would be up to them to stop him.

Those would be women who have a legal right to ask to be treated by someone of their own sex. Which, as we all know now, means biological sex and not silly game playing.

Why are their rights less important than what Dr Upton and all those who have decided that they have a different gender want?

That's not what the OP said. Dr Upton said that he expected to be called to examine a biological woman who said that they did not want a biological male examining them. The person calling Dr Upton to examine the biological woman would then be facilitating his wishes at the expense of a woman who would almost certainly be in pain and vulnerable.

Does that not bother you the tiniest amount? If not for yourself then perhaps you have a mother, a sister, a daughter or a woman friend who can explain to you that women are not solely there to indulge male wishes and fantasies.

Victoria pushes the pretenders agenda very strongly. Not visiting any time soon.

That’s a very good article. And Upton will cause problems by pushing boundaries at the expense of women wherever he goes. It’s in his nature.

Wait - what the fuck ?

Yup, I remember reading the tribunal transcripts of just what linguistic hoops a woman would have to crawl through (while, let's not forget, traumatised, worried, in pain, desperate for treatment or whatever) to create a situation where she would be able to exclude Dr Upton from treating her when she'd asked for a female doctor.

And as for whether or not anyone would want Dr Upton treating them, I'd be very nervous of treatment from a doctor who thinks biological sex is a 'nebulous dog whistle'.

He also said words to the effect that he identifies as female and is not a robot so is therefore a biological woman, which delusion may somewhat explain his entitled attitude to treating women who ask to be treated by a woman.
I'd choose the robot.

My predictions above were correct. Upton has got the sort of job that is often open to doctors from overseas. A&E, especially at junior level is hard to staff. Busy and anti social hours. He has wisely opted for a resort rather than a rural farming or mining area, but probably still less popular, as Australian residents, who receive recruitment priority, usually prefer cities at this point in their careers.

My doctor daughter left for Australia two weeks ago. She is lucky to have a contract in the area she wants to specialise in, and in a major city, but both will face the same dilemma once those contracts are over. Hang round on short term contracts until you get residency, and are able to compete for a training place in Australia. Or join the intense competition for either trust jobs (we don't offer resident priority so no advantage in being British) or for training.

Its tough for them all. Theo/Beth will presumably realise that to keep the option of staying in Australia open, they will need to keep their head down and focus on the job. No new contract = no new visa. DDs observation was that Australian hospitals put a lot of emphasis on practical experience and on references. So Theo/Beth needs to focus on the job rather than theyself and their specialness.

That's interesting to hear - I hope Theo/Beth is kept extremely busy working unsociable hours. Aussies in NSW can be quite direct, so perhaps he'll have to rethink his threat of continuing to treat women against their wishes.

Article in the Times about Upton's move to Australia:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/b15d8024-fe04-4fd8-b1bc-f5a8ba2b2c04?shareToken=e6f9157122877cd592e8d52efa05c316&ver=article