We take doctors from Third World Countries

Thank you, Rosie, Casdon and others who’ve written supportive posts.

There are a lot of misconceptions about doctors. Most people don’t realise that student doctors are essentially working for free in the latter years of their training, as they build up their clinical skills. All newly-qualified British doctors have to do a minimum of two years in the NHS or they will not be registered. They can’t move into private care or go abroad to work, because they’re still not fully qualified until two years post-grad and won’t get jobs.

The system is appalling - I’ve said before that I would not want to be the patient coming into A&E who is seen by a doctor in their 75th hour of work that week. Nor would I want to be one of the 300 surgical patients just two junior doctors fresh out of med school are caring for overnight.

My dd is of the Covid cohort, who qualified in spring 2020 and were thrown into the burgeoning pandemic with no PPE. The chickens are coming home to roost now, more than two years on, with doctors her age dropping out or changing course in their droves. They’ve been told that they’ll be studied for research for the rest of their careers, which is an extraordinary thing in itself.

Katie59

The typical salary for a GP is £70-100k full time, that does not sound like low pay and I know many work limited hours. I’m sure at times it can be stressful many jobs are like that for a lot less pay.
Nurses have similar responsibilities for half the pay of a GP I did 38 yrs as a Nurse / Midwife so I know about stress doing 12 hour shifts

It is low pay compared to an equivalent level of training and responsibility in the private sector. Name another job where you study for 6 years at degree level, are in compulsory training roles for a further 6 years, do exams to proceed to the next level, have to work on call, can be sued for any errors you make - and are subject to regular abuse as well.

The typical salary for a GP is £70-100k full time, that does not sound like low pay and I know many work limited hours. I’m sure at times it can be stressful many jobs are like that for a lot less pay.
Nurses have similar responsibilities for half the pay of a GP I did 38 yrs as a Nurse / Midwife so I know about stress doing 12 hour shifts

My ex-husband, my brother and now, my son, work/worked for the NHS. When we (husband and I), came here in the 70s, the Welsh Valleys were crying out for GPs, because the local Graduates, did not want to work there. They preferred the more glamorous Practices in England.
I quote easybee ‘ ….. Not one was prepared to stay in Wales when training was completed’.
And that is why we have to recruit medical graduates from abroad .

Gransnet may have deleted paddyanne54's original post, but we see what it said. What a nasty and inaccurate post! I know who should be ashamed of whom. I hope you get a sincere apology and recant SueDonim

The son of a family I know were very grateful their son managed to qualify as a doctor in one of the eastern European countries, I can't remember exactly which. It was the only way they could afford the still huge cost of his training. He is now a house doctor in our NHS. The country where he studied trains far more doctors than they need, they see it as an income source. Not all foreign trained doctors are being poached from where they're needed.

Lathyrus no magic solutions I'm afraid, because it needs the kind of international co-operation that seems to be failing at the moment. It would be a good start if our government whoever is in power! Takes international co-operation to resolve the Big Issues seriously like we used to at least attempt to do so. There are so many things that break my heart - like huge numbers of people in Somalia starving right now and hardly a whisper the news.

but a good start is to train up enough doctors ourselves

- I'd also like us to seriously join international organisations that could, for example, try to extract some money/resources in Nigeria from the gigantic profits being made from the oil there, little if any of which goes back into the economy generally (just to the rich of Nigeria and international investors) for funding basic health services.

personally all I can do is give to Medicins Sans Frontiere and hope they can do what they can.

We don’t have forced labour in the UK. People can take their skills anywhere they wish.

I listened to a radio programme recently about doctors from an eastern European country, (cannot remember which one) when 21 out of 23 newly qualified doctors were applying for (not recruited ) posts in Britain and other prosperous European countries , because a) the salary was much higher and b) they could develop their training beyond that offered by their own country.
I also heard about a tranche of British medical students who had chosen to train in Wales because the fees were lower and it was easier to get a place. Not one was prepared to stay in Wales when training was completed.

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.

“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.

Sometimes it’s best to ignore hateful posts …

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?

Correct - coming in, not common in.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

What a rude post paddyann54

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good post Lathyrus