Skip to main content

Migration and Saving the NHS

Anyone with relatives or friends working in the NHS knows that it is managed extremely badly.  The clearest objective evidence of this dreadful management is the fact that doctors are leaving the NHS in large numbers.  In the BMJ Opinion Article Why are Doctors Quitting the NHS it says that in 2011 almost three quarters of what used to be called Senior House Officers in hospitals (FY2) progressed further in their careers but by 2017 this had dropped to 42%. Over half of junior doctors had dropped out [Note 1].

When I was a Post-Doc in a Medical School last century almost all Senior Housemen stayed in the profession.  In those days they had squash courts, free parking, free accommodation for being on-call, a bar and subsidised canteens and clubs.  Now they have almost none of these facilities and are charged market rates for parking and accommodation.  A rapacious management has reduced Doctors to an exploitable resource that they divide and rule with the ruthlessness of authoritarian dictators.

Many of the reasons for doctors leaving the profession are covered in the GMC document The State of Medical Education and Practice in the UK.  The punch line of this document is that we are at high risk of doctors leaving clinical practice in unprecedented numbers. Within the next three years, many are considering reducing their hours (around a third), going part time (a fifth) and/or planning to leave UK practice and work abroad (a fifth).

Yes, 20% of UK doctors are planning to emigrate to escape the NHS.

Central government has attempted to correct the loss of doctors by increasing the number of training places but the losses mean that they must recruit from overseas.  In 2018 half of new joiners were non-UK graduates, up from 44% in 2012.  I feel sorry for these foreign doctors who are enticed to come to the NHS.  Most can have no idea how bad it is for doctors.

Worst of all the media, especially the BBC, have been covering the appalling management and consequent retention disaster in the NHS as evidence of how important it is to permit large scale migration of medical staff to the UK.  The journalists do not bother to find out what is actually happening but instead use the NHS to bolster pro-migration policies.

What really makes me angry is to see relatives being exploited mercilessly, being left in charge of large parts of hospitals past the end of their shift in the knowledge that they are so dedicated that they will not simply go home.  They are not thanked in return for this dedication, instead the management will often spring the surprise of a week of night shifts on them as a reward.

 -------------------------------------

As an aside it is amazing how the population are entirely unaware that Austerity was prolonged by adherence to the EU Stability and Growth Pact.  Don't believe this? Click on these links: Parliamentary Report on EU Excess Deficit Procedure in the UK and  History of the EU Excess Deficit Procedure with regard to the UK.

Note 1:
'In 2017, 57.4% of Foundation Year 2 doctors did not enter higher-training posts and 9000 doctors quit the NHS entirely. [1] In 2011, when career-destination surveys were first conducted, 71.3% of FY2 doctors progressed into higher training-posts. By 2016 this had dropped to 50.4% and last year the rates had plummeted further to 42.6%. [2] The rate of decline is near exponential. Added to this is a growing culture of quitting both across the specialties and across the generations. [1]'






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Practical Idealism by Richard Nicolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi

Coudenhove-Kalergi was a pioneer of European integration. He was the founder and President for 49 years of the Paneuropean Union. His parents were Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an oil merchant, antiques-dealer, and huge landowner family in Tokyo. His "Pan-Europa" was published in 1923 and contained a membership form for the Pan-Europa movement. Coudenhove-Kalergi's movement held its first Congress in Vienna in 1926. In 1927 the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand was elected honorary president.  Personalities attending included: Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud. Figures who later became central to founding the EU, such as Konrad Adenauer became members . His basic idea was that democracy was a transitional stage that leads to rule by a new aristocracy that is largely taken from the Jewish "master race" (Kalergi's terminology). His movement was reviled by Hitler and H

The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

"The Falklands have always been Argentine" is taught to every Argentine child as a matter of faith.  What was Argentina during the time when it "always" possessed Las Malvinas?  In this article I will trace the history of Argentina in the context of its physical and political relationship with "Las Malvinas", the Falkland Islands.  The Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands dates from a brief episode in 1831-32 so it is like Canada claiming the USA despite two centuries of separate development. This might sound like ancient history but Argentina has gone to war for this ancient claim so the following article is well worth reading. For a summary of the legal case see: Las Malvinas: The Legal Case Argentina traces its origins to Spanish South America when it was part of the Viceroyalty of the Rio del Plata.  The Falklands lay off the Viceroyalty of Peru, controlled by the Captain General of Chile.  In 1810 the Falklands were far from the geographical b

The Report on Racism

The " Report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities " has just been published.  The Commissioners were nearly all from BAME backgrounds and have produced a robust and fair Report. The Report identified a class divide in which the cycle of advantage maintains a section of the population in wealth and leaves the large bulk of the population in relative poverty.   The wealthy class is largely white British but the poorer class consists of large numbers of white British and other ethnic groups.  This class divide causes a bias in the crude statistics on disadvantage so that majority, poor white British are labelled as "white supremacists" etc. when it is the small wealthy class that actually creates the disparity that causes this analysis. The most striking finding is that different ethnic groups had very different experiences and outcomes.  Educational outcomes demonstrate this at a glance: Red text added for this article Most ethnic groups had better outcome