NHS faces mass exodus of doctors as one in five considers quitting the UK

20 comments

1. On the one hand doctors are in demand globally and I don’t doubt , in fact I know from personal experience, some are considering leaving.

   On the other hand , these sorts of claims are meaningless unless you look at whether any more than usual actually followed through. We see the same stories about this group *thinking about* quitting their job or that group *considering* leaving the country. If you ask this sort of question lots of people will say ‘sure I’m thinking about it’ the important thing is knowing how often they actually act.

2. Data like this needs more analysis and comparison.

   For example, Brits love a good moan, what is the % of people considering leaving the UK in other professions? Is there a meaningful difference?

   What % of people would actually leave? I know people who’ve spent years saying they’re going to leave the UK, the country is finished etc yet they’re still here. Saying this and doing it are 2 very different things

3. They get paid well in the middle eastern countries and Thier UK experience is valued highly there

4. Doctors from other countries come here too. There’s a global talent pool for skilled professionals, nothing wrong with that. The vast majority will stay where they trained though due to family ties.

5. Kind of sad situation and one step closer to the full privatization of the health sector. The same exodus is happening with people moving into the private (the one that can afford) with the poor service quality, long wait times and apathetic assistance for people in need.

6. There’s enough money invested or hidden offshore in places that have no benefit to the UK economy. Money that has been made through the productivity of British taxpayers but kept by a few. Enough to restore the pay of **every** British worker to real-terms 2008 levels and more.

   The proportion of this wealth held by these people has grown consistently for the past 30+ years, and accelerated during covid. This money is being taken out of the British economy and does not move through the tax system. If it were being paid to the people creating it, it would be being spent in the UK, being taxed.

   The tax black-holes that exist now would be filled if this stopped happening; if the excess value of our productivity stayed in the economy of the working(and middle) class. Pay would not be stagnant and down in real terms.

7. At the end of the day, if you don’t pay the wages that people are worth, they’re not going to feel rewarded and give their best. My BIL is an investment banker on £500k, not counting their annual bonus, he works 24/7, literally never not on-call for his bosses, and puts up with it.

   Whereas FY1s are treated like shit in the workplace – but back when I did that job I was on just £23k. Wages are now much better since the last few years, and I’m now a doctor with 8 years experience making £56k as my base salary (with a 40% supplement for all the OOH work I do). IMO, I’m not far off being paid fairly now for the job I do.

   But looking forward into when I get my consultant job – I despair again. Consultant salaries are massively devalued in the real term, and the UK pay our consultants the lowest wages out of all our developed and anglophonic brethren (you only need to go across the sea to Ireland to be earning €250k as your starting salary). Yes, £100k sounds like an amazing salary to the median earner in the UK – but we used to value our consultants so much more in the past. Consultant salaries had eroded by **28%** since 2008. Losing almost one-third of their purchasing power in real-terms.

   I’m looking to work even harder as a consultant, for the specialty I’m in, than I do now as a registrar. Why would I do that, after *16 years* of specialist training to do the job, for £100k when I can earn double in other countries with a similar or greater standard of living? At the very least, I certainly don’t see myself working a full-time NHS contract in the distant future.

8. NHS was a good idea 50 years ago, but in today’s climate, it doesn’t work.

9. 1 in 5 is considering it. Lol.

   Yeh they aint going nowhere.

   Get back to work.

10. > one in eight (12%) are considering leaving the UK to work abroad, according to GMC figures.

    1/8 think about – so in reality maybe 1%-2% will actually go through with it. Similar sort of hysteria as the millionaire all leaving…

11. It’s really depressing that we’re not fighting tooth and nail for the NHS.

12. Sounds like the mood of the whole country. Can’t even service our own debt.

13. £105k for a consultant in NI and £300k 10mins south of the border in ROI

    Not to mention the increased quality of life in somewhere like Australia

    No reason to stay in the crumbling UK just to be hated for how much you earn and have half the country think you should be happy getting rinsed by the taxman

14. I ‘consider’ quitting the UK for job prospects almost daily. Doesn’t mean I will though. Family etc.

15. If only we had still had access to the doctors who are enjoying free movement in the EU and are incentivised and paid well.

    Vitriol-ridden Brexit voters aging out and becoming more reliant on healthcare threw themselves under the campaign bus, what a shame for them.

16. They won’t though. Like they just won’t. Sure a few will but 1/5? No. Sure the grass may seem greener but the reality of so many leaving family friends and life’s behind? I don’t see it. We need to have a rebalance in this society. How can thinks that have no material benefit to the country make such high sums in profit or pay yet doctors and cleaners and who ever actually makes the country tick are constantly snubbed.

17. Worth pointing out its not only losing to emigration abroad. Some doctors I know, and know of, have left the NHS for full time in private sector (obviously these were experienced renowned consultants which is a big loss to the NHS), some are reducing their NHS hours and working part time as full time not sustainable (or financially viable given marginal tax rates and nursery fees, appreciate this is not unique to doctors but its loss of productivity in NHS), some have left NHS to work full time as MSL or CRP in Pharma (again loss of a talented doctors)

    This is on top of squeezes to academia so research inclined doctors aren’t able to drive UK medicine beyond basic service provision (there is also a loss of potential financial benefits to the NHS by not participating in commercial trials)

    Lastly medicine being less attractive as a career also ultimately affects who applies to medical school and the quality of doctors we produce locally and also recruit from abroad (generally the best foreign graduates will go to the US and now increasingly the UK is falling or has fallen behind Canada, Australia as a choice destination)

    We can have a basic NHS service where there are doctors and PAs/ACPs/etc who see patients but the care provided is of low quality, low productivity, low efficiency, poor reputation — this is the direction we are heading in and in some areas already there….

18. And we’re all worried about the super rich leaving?

19. the salaries may be shit, but at least the weather is okay

20. Keep underpaying them AND taxing the hell out of them, that will surely fix it!

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