NHS winter crisis looms

Why not, roses?

They're not all heathens, you know.

Yes of course it would be good to train and retain more UK doctors. I was just cross at Mair's post. Our students may not fancy training abroad but its an option open to them. Travel broadens the mind...

In all honesty Jane I can't see many UK medical students really preferring to live and train in Romania.

I don't see why we can't train more here AND import as well.It is good for doctors and surgeons and GP's from abroad to be here for a while, they want to, they don't always want to live here forever though.Therefore more home grown ones, who will live here forever would be a very good thing.

Why on earth would these temporarily imported doctors want to come here to cover our shortfall then be told to push off home once they're not needed.
Starred A levels are all very well but are no substitute for the right temperament for a doctor. That Romanian doctor must have influenced hundreds of people on her way to practice. Her determination alone is a lesson to potential students. If your GC can't get into Cambridge perhaps s/he could train elsewhere. Romania perhaps? Its a 2 way street.

The NHS is underfunded.

I can't be bothered discussing anything with you any more, Mair. Your arguments aren't consistent, rational or informed and I don't like the xenophobic tone of your posts.

The NHS for a long time now has been taking doctors /surgeons from abroad because it's a cheaper option than training up our own medical students, the same applies to GP's.
Yes, it will take ten years, even if we start right now, but it's still a good idea to do it.

Why Jane10?
If it was your grandchild wanting to be a doctor, with 4A* at A level and turned own for a place at Cambridge, I suspect you feel differently.

Why do you think this much sought after place is better given to a Romanian who could have stayed in Romania and worked as a doctor there?

What a waste! We and Romania could both have benefitted by having a doctor!

Neither can I, Jane10.

Cambridge awards places on merit and produced an outstanding GP, to whom I am eternally grateful.

Where are you going to find the money to train them, roses?

I know this is addressed to Roses but here is my view:

Well if poor countries like Romania and Ukraine can train doctors I fail to see why we cant?

We should start by reserving all medical school places for our own citizens. We have opened more medical schools but I also suggest expanding the shortened four year Graduate medical course and providing loans to enable mature students to retrain.

How long will it be before the newly trained doctors and nurses will be able to work? It takes ten years to train a doctor for a specialism, which won't solve the current problems

You are right about this, and we should import doctors for hard to fill roles on fixed term contracts in the meantime, without the right to permanent settlement. They should preferably be from Australia as a) they speak English as a mother tongue b) they are usually not seeking permanent settlement c) their universities are mostly low on corruption and train to a high standard.

I can't believe Mair's last post.

"The best GP I have ever had was from Romania."

I daresay the fact that she did her degree twice, the second time at our top university was a factor.

What a shame Cambridge gave a much sought after place to her though rather than one of our own nationals . Some countries reserve medical school places for citizens only.

The best GP I have ever had was from Romania. She had trained as a doctor in Romania, but her qualification wasn't accepted by the NHS. Therefore, she started from scratch when she came to the UK. Originally, her work visa was as a healthcare assistant in a hospital, but she got into Cambridge to study medicine, which she did. She came to my GP practice as part of her GP training and I was almost in tears when she went. I have never known a GP to be so knowledgeable and genuinely caring.

Where are you going to find the money to train them, roses? How long will it be before the newly trained doctors and nurses will be able to work? It takes ten years to train a doctor for a specialism, which won't solve the current problems.

The number of jobs for doctors and nurses, especially district nurses, has fallen over the last six years, so there's not much point training them. STPs are already planning to cut the total number of beds.

This is all a distraction from the real problem of underfunding.

Ha ha ha, whitewave. Local authority spending isn't ring-fenced and NHS responsibilities (public health, social care, learning disabilities) have been transferred to local authorities. Cuts in those areas have had a direct impact on the NHS.

I don't think a race to the bottom is the answer. Standards for foreign trained medics employed by the NHS have become more stringent. The biggest problem is when agencies are used to plug gaps.

How many doctors, nurses or paramedics in training do you personally know, Mair? Or do you rely on the internet for all your evidence? Do you have any real knowledge of the standards required for school leaving exams in other countries?

Yes but the Tories have always said that the NHS is ring fenced.

Yes, we should train more doctors and more nurses here in the future.

ww doctors ( Tory or not) often have their own personal axes to grind.In any case, the good old money days ended, there was a financial crash.

I was thinking the same thing when I read dd's post!

www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/opinion/corruption-in-universities-a-blueprint-for-reform/2009139.article

What is to be done when an entire education system is corrupted, when universities sell cheap diplomas and the best academics move abroad?

Consider the case of Romania, where corruption has been pervasive for more than 20 years. Government ministers are proven serial plagiarists, students acquire their dissertations for modest sums online, and a failure to investigate allows widespread cheating to take place without censure. Everyone gets a degree, nearly all MPs are also professors at a university they helped to gain accreditation through their influence, and all seem to benefit; however, no Romanian university features in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the country is stagnating without skilled labour.

And this is the EU!! Eek!

And consider this Australian experience;

In April 2015, the Four Corners program of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation revealed examples of how the standards of Australian universities are being compromised through corrupt practices, mainly as a result of the pressure on them to recruit foreign students and to ensure that they pass the exams in order to obtain much-needed funds. The examples given included the involvement of fraudulent recruitment agents, universities graduating poorly qualified or unqualified nurses, widespread plagiarism, cheating and exploitation. The program was appropriately labelled ‘Degrees of Deception’. In 2014, a story appeared relating how fraud and corruption within and outside Australia’s immigration services enabled thousands of foreign students to acquire illegal permanent residency visas in Australia, thereby resulting in unemployment of Australian graduates.

www.insidehighered.com/blogs/world-view/higher-education-hotbed-corruption

We would reasonably assume that a nurse "qualified" in Australia had reached the required standards! Globalisation is pulling down even first world countries to the standards of the lowest.

I'm glad the UK makes it tough for A level students to study Medicine. It's one of the reasons UK trained doctors are in demand globally. Personally, I wouldn't be too happy to be treated by somebody with an NVQ Level 2 in Applied Science

Yet you are happy to be treated by doctors trained in countries where not only are entry levels lower, but training standards are far less rigorous and corruption is much higher too?

Double standards or what?

The Tory doctor wasn't Sarah Wollaston by the way I actually know her name. It was a chap.

I have the most terrible weakness for names.

I think the NHS 'bod' was Simon Stevens.It was quite ironic that he held up a copy of the Daily Mail with headlines about the latest crisis. He's right that the NHS wasn't given what it asked for, although Hunt and May keep bleating on that it was.

The NHS was promised an extra £10 billion. What the government won't admit is that £3.5 billion wasn't new money, but came out of the public health and training budgets. Nurses in training are effectively paying for part of the increase with the fees they're paying to do their degrees.

Sarah Wollaston, Tory MP and former GP, knows this and to her credit keeps going on about the issues and points out the lies.

All this talk about the EU and the NHS is taking our eye off what is really important, and contributes nothing to the problem.

Watched the commons committee yesterday, where the NHS bod (I'm useless at names) directly contradicted May after she indicated at PMQ that the NHS is receiving more money than it requested. The bod said absolutely not the NHS got LESS than they requested.

At no stage was it suggested that the EU was an issue in the NHS problems, so let's put that one to bed once and for all.

Another interesting view was Newsnight. The presenter with the knee length grey boots, suggested to a Tory MP who is a practising doctor that because of the demographics and new technology etc, the NHS will always be behind the curve and playing catchup that in fact there is no alternative.

He catagorically disagreed and -wait for it - pointed to how the Blair and Brown government reversed this downwood spiral by funding the NHS properly, without the need to raise taxes etc. and that the NHS had got to that glorious position of being able to properly plan innovation and the future All that effort has been gradually destroyed by the Tory government.

There was another strange bod on Newsnight representing I assume the private sector, but all he achieved was to throw into deep contrast the focus of business - emphasis on prophet and the two doctors - care for human life. The contrast was quite extraordinary.

This is very likely to be May's nemeses