We take doctors from Third World Countries

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.