We take doctors from Third World Countries

I worked in medical staffing of a major hospital 45 years ago, there were frequent recruiting fairs in Africa/Asia for Doctors and Nurses.

Nothing new.

Thats really interesting GrannyGravy13. It doesn't make it right though, does it?

Wyllow3

Thats really interesting GrannyGravy13. It doesn't make it right though, does it?

Doesn’t make it right I agree, but it has been happening since the beginning of the NHS.

Did you complain when the borders opened up in Europe to allow free movement of people? Do you know how poor some of those countries are who could ill afford their brightest and best to leave just when they were emerging from the communist cosh.

Lots of U.k. trained doctors head off to the US, Canada, Australia, Germany etc etc it’s a merry go round. We have 2 French doctors at our surgery, one Shri Lankan and one from an Arabic country ( don’t know which one) Nothing new. But it’s getting worse with the terms and conditions in the NHS deteriorating.

vegansrock GPs have always operated outside of the NHS, they negotiate their contract, totally different to Doctors working within hospitals.

It’s not quite as simplistic as that.

I totally agree we should have more medical training places as a whole, not just doctors.

But in countries where all medicine is private and there is nothing even vaguely like the NHS there is a surplus of doctors.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who need a doctor in those countries. It means the medical profession is viewed very differently. Families pay for a member of the family to receive training so that they will in turn support the family. So they only work where they can earn good money. If that is overseas then that is where they will take posts.

But if no overseas posts were available it would not increase medical care in their own country because there are more doctors than there are people who can pay for medical care.

It may seem an alien concept to us in a country where doctors are employed by the state and medical care is available throughout the country but that’s not how it operates in many other countries. Doctors, apart from a few committed humanitarians, live in cities where there are people who can pay for their services. Poorer country areas have no doctors because they cannot pay. A doctor will stay in the city treating the occasional case and working another job rather than live in a rural area where nobody can pay.

The support of the family is the main driver. If being a doctor ceased to be lucrative families would just pay for training in some other more lucrative area.

So yes we should be training more doctors in this country because we waste talent by not having the places. But it would only make a minimal difference to those countries we recruit from in terms of people being able to receive treatment. It might even make it worse if people there stopped training because there were no jobs for them.

Good post Lathyrus

Most importantly, we need to make remaining in medicine an attractive option for those who have trained in the UK, because so many don’t, for a variety of reasons, remain in the UK health systems. There’s a brain drain.

It seems that lots of these recruited doctors work in the private sector, not the NHS, according to this article. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63141929

It’s very difficult to train more doctors in the UK because there aren’t enough clinical placements in hospitals for them to learn practical skills and later on, there aren’t enough post-grad training places or consultant jobs for career progression.

My dd has to all intents left the NHS because of the punishing and unsafe workload of junior doctors. She is now self-employed, locumming for the NHS, and working 42 hrs a week instead of the 72+ hours she had been working.

Same here; I think more than half of the doctors in our town are from South Africa. Our neighbour is one, and he lured a few of his classmates here as well. Good on him.

We cannot train health care professionals quickly enough; there are not enough spaces at the schools. The thing is, we all knew this was coming 20 years ago. The large demographic of the post war baby boom is obvious from census records, and everyone knew when they started hitting 50 and older that there would be more health care needed. The wait list for students to get into nursing school is over 2 years here, and other professionals and technicians have the same issues. So there are young people that want to train, but there is not the capacity.

It's all poor planning from government and universities, so now they are recruiting from anywhere possible.

Same in Australia. No one wants to be a GP anymore because they don’t pay that well and so there is a huge shortage, especially in rural areas. No incentives whatsoever they just have a huge workload. My grandson, when asked if he would look at being a GP just said, ‘no way’. He is completing his medical degree as a post graduate medical scientist. Too much stress, too much work, not enough pay.

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What a rude post paddyann54

The problem in many countries is that there are far too many qualified professionals of all kinds and there is no money to pay them, or the hospitals to treat patients.

Their only hope of improving their life is to migrate

Locum / Bank medical staff cost the NHS a fortune, working beside those on the payroll they get paid more and can call their own tune

I have always felt that this practice needs an overhaul

paddyann54

Oh dear SD and there you were complaining you couldn't get an appointment!Well you wont if newly trained doctors jump ship after using public funding for training...FREE education .If she was mine I would be ashamed of her.She must have known the hours and conditions BEFORE she started .Or does she consider herself too good to work like every other newly qualified doctor.Shocking!!

You are demonstrating a serious lack of both knowledge and compassion in this post paddyann54.
There are not enough training places available for junior doctors in the UK.
Thousands of junior doctors are in this position through no fault of their own.
It’s unreasonable to expect a non training grade doctor to work over 70 hours a week (or for that matter one who is in training)
The NHS pay rates are too low
Working as a locum doctor is still working in an NHS setting, but it gives the doctor more control so they can maintain a work/life balance. It is not selfish to want that.
Do you have any idea of the financial implications to families of their child going to medical school?
I think you should apologise.

There are a lot of other options within hospitals for medical professionals. More pay, more support . If you are a medical specialist you are paid a lot more than a GP. I doubt any trained Doctor would actually ‘waste’ their degree ( which they pay heavily for ) Medical degrees cost a fortune, paddyann, no one would want to chuck thousands and thousands away. In my.country you pay for your own training, I don’t know about the UK.

We participate in an international scheme where we DO NOT actively recruit in Red List countries.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/code-of-practice-for-the-international-recruitment-of-health-and-social-care-personnel/code-of-practice-for-the-international-recruitment-of-health-and-social-care-personnel-in-england

here are their fine words

"We are pleased to introduce the revised code of practice for recruiting personnel internationally for health and social care organisations in England.

With a projected global shortage of 10 million health workers to achieve universal health coverage in low and lower-middle income countries by 2030, we remain committed to be a force for good in the world, and support better health and care both within and beyond our shores.

To that end, we recognise the important role that international health and care workers play in health and care service delivery in the UK while remaining committed to ensuring that we recruit them in an ethically responsible manner.

We are not actively recruiting from those countries the World Health Organization (WHO) recognise as having the most pressing health and care workforce-related challenges."

We ARE actively recruiting in those countries was the point of and proof of in the programme.

We should be training enough doctors ourselves for the UK.

Sure, we'll have some going abroad, and we'll have some common in, twas always thus. I'm not arguing it was not so nor should not be so.

But if we are actively recruiting doctors from countries who desperately losing them and deliberately only training half the doctors we need, its the worse kind of hypocrisy to publish papers saying oh no we will follow WHO guidelines then going agains them.

We have to seek international ways for the poorest countries to keep more doctors, not steal them.

Correct - coming in, not common in.

paddyann54

Oh dear SD and there you were complaining you couldn't get an appointment!Well you wont if newly trained doctors jump ship after using public funding for training...FREE education .If she was mine I would be ashamed of her.She must have known the hours and conditions BEFORE she started .Or does she consider herself too good to work like every other newly qualified doctor.Shocking!!

Having supported someone financially through seven years of medical training and then paid for the fees for the further exams they have to take, I would like paddyann to acknowledge that she is mistaken in believing that it is state funded and free.

It’s paid for just like all University courses, tuition,fees, accommodation, study materials. The lot.

When an economics graduate gets a job in the Private sector nobody thinks that’s wrong and says but you must go and work for the Government!

I’d also point out that during the seven years of training the NHS gets increasingly qualified staff at a cheap rate because they are still in the training which they themselves (or their parents -sigh) are paying for.

Will you say you’ve learned something today Paddyann?

Sometimes it’s best to ignore hateful posts …

“We have to seek international ways for the poorest countries to keep more doctors”.

I agree.

As I explained above doctors in poor countries do not work where they have no chance of being paid enough to recoup their training costs.

So poor countries would need international funding to ensure that their doctors would be paid regardless of the patients ability to pay and at a level that would make the costs of training worthwhile. Honestly I can’t see that happening.

Or an authoritarian state that compels a given number to train, places them in given areas and prevents them from leaving.

Other than those two options I don’t see what would work.

If there are no lucrative overseas openings fewer people in those countries will chose medicine as a career. There’s no incentive to so. So a decreasing supply of doctors in those countries anyway.

Do you have any thoughts on solutions Wyllow? If it can be done it should be done I agree. I just can’t see how.

Nice to see you display your ignorance and your true colours Paddyann. Others have put you right on matters and I have no need to justify myself or my family to you.