Not surprising, seeing as there haven’t been enough spaces at medical schools for a while, and not enough junior doctor training positions at hospitals either. Our ability to train new doctors has been cut completely to the bone.
Imagine being one of the hundreds of students that meets all the criteria to study medicine but miss out due to competition, or the junior doctor that can’t get onto a training post due to competition even though there’s a massive shortage of consultants in all specialities. Workforce planning doesn’t exist
We are a parasite on foreign countries for their doctors and nurses. We don’t train enough here and many of those we do train end up moving overseas because of how bad working in the NHS is becoming. As good as those who come here are, we should not be relying on them to plug gaps that we have created through our own faults. We need more places for students and more hospitals and GP practices for them to train in (as well as to treat patients, obviously). The problem is that the Tories will not spend the money needed to do anything meaningful. They might throw a token amount at the problem, an amount that sounds big in the press, they will not invest the billions needed when there is no profit to be had from public healthcare.
I always found it crazy you had to get perfect grades in this country to get into medical school and there is still a good chance you wont get in. Meanwhile grade requirements elsewhere are much lower and you can just come back to the UK afterwards. A few friends from School couldn’t even apply for medicine in this country with their grades but paid to study in central/eastern Europe instead.
You would think that this would encourage a nation to up its capacity to fully train doctors.
But I guess that would be another empty promise
Places at medical school is just half the story. There is a huge bottleneck in post graduate education. There are hundreds of highly trained doctors unable to progress in their training because of the scarcity of places.
I don’t know why you’d want to be a doctor in the UK if you’re a UK citizen, unless you are genuinely solely motivated by helping people. That is of coure very noble, but it’s also opening you up to exploitation and a really hard life.
Of my friends of which many became doctors (as a student I worked in a place that favoured cars, most medic students had cars, so I know quite a lot), most ended up working extremely hard hours for very very little money, I’m sure in 20 years they’ll be outearning me, but for now they are woefully underpaid and massively overworked.
Hunt, SoS for Health for 6 years is calling this situation ‘morally dubious’, as if forward planning was not part of his remit
The NHS is the only public health system in Europe which does not have a workforce planning strategy tied in with university medical schools. This is why there has always been a misalignment (either up or down) between doctors and nurses (as well as other roles) and the amount graduating from universities. That is largely why we also import doctors and why many doctors feel they don’t have a career path or progression within the NHS either.
Brexiteers will be pleased if fewer EU doctors are being hired. It means Brexit worked.
Cue massive uptick in dinlo’s shouting that they want to see “an english doctor” in NHS waiting rooms
Good for the government, they can’t strike and a massive one is building. Shit pay and shit conditions. It’s going to blow sooner than later.
It would simply be impossible to have more doctors without importing millions of fighting age men. Impossible. There are just no applicants for medicine! Not one person wants to do it! We put up so many ads asking for people to study medicine and nobody applies. Brits are just too lazy.
What we need to do is instead import millions more fighting age men, and then use up training spots in NHS hospitals to retrain these people who barely speak english and did not go to an equivalent medical school due to studying in a corrupt country.
It’s the only way.
Cue the ‘immigrants taking our jobs’ crowd
So much for cutting immigration and jobs for locals lol. Brexiteers were all about that until it meant paying locals.
15 comments
Not surprising, seeing as there haven’t been enough spaces at medical schools for a while, and not enough junior doctor training positions at hospitals either. Our ability to train new doctors has been cut completely to the bone.
Imagine being one of the hundreds of students that meets all the criteria to study medicine but miss out due to competition, or the junior doctor that can’t get onto a training post due to competition even though there’s a massive shortage of consultants in all specialities. Workforce planning doesn’t exist
We are a parasite on foreign countries for their doctors and nurses. We don’t train enough here and many of those we do train end up moving overseas because of how bad working in the NHS is becoming. As good as those who come here are, we should not be relying on them to plug gaps that we have created through our own faults. We need more places for students and more hospitals and GP practices for them to train in (as well as to treat patients, obviously). The problem is that the Tories will not spend the money needed to do anything meaningful. They might throw a token amount at the problem, an amount that sounds big in the press, they will not invest the billions needed when there is no profit to be had from public healthcare.
I always found it crazy you had to get perfect grades in this country to get into medical school and there is still a good chance you wont get in. Meanwhile grade requirements elsewhere are much lower and you can just come back to the UK afterwards. A few friends from School couldn’t even apply for medicine in this country with their grades but paid to study in central/eastern Europe instead.
You would think that this would encourage a nation to up its capacity to fully train doctors.
But I guess that would be another empty promise
Places at medical school is just half the story. There is a huge bottleneck in post graduate education. There are hundreds of highly trained doctors unable to progress in their training because of the scarcity of places.
I don’t know why you’d want to be a doctor in the UK if you’re a UK citizen, unless you are genuinely solely motivated by helping people. That is of coure very noble, but it’s also opening you up to exploitation and a really hard life.
Of my friends of which many became doctors (as a student I worked in a place that favoured cars, most medic students had cars, so I know quite a lot), most ended up working extremely hard hours for very very little money, I’m sure in 20 years they’ll be outearning me, but for now they are woefully underpaid and massively overworked.
Hunt, SoS for Health for 6 years is calling this situation ‘morally dubious’, as if forward planning was not part of his remit
The NHS is the only public health system in Europe which does not have a workforce planning strategy tied in with university medical schools. This is why there has always been a misalignment (either up or down) between doctors and nurses (as well as other roles) and the amount graduating from universities. That is largely why we also import doctors and why many doctors feel they don’t have a career path or progression within the NHS either.
Brexiteers will be pleased if fewer EU doctors are being hired. It means Brexit worked.
Cue massive uptick in dinlo’s shouting that they want to see “an english doctor” in NHS waiting rooms
Good for the government, they can’t strike and a massive one is building. Shit pay and shit conditions. It’s going to blow sooner than later.
It would simply be impossible to have more doctors without importing millions of fighting age men. Impossible. There are just no applicants for medicine! Not one person wants to do it! We put up so many ads asking for people to study medicine and nobody applies. Brits are just too lazy.
What we need to do is instead import millions more fighting age men, and then use up training spots in NHS hospitals to retrain these people who barely speak english and did not go to an equivalent medical school due to studying in a corrupt country.
It’s the only way.
Cue the ‘immigrants taking our jobs’ crowd
So much for cutting immigration and jobs for locals lol. Brexiteers were all about that until it meant paying locals.