Should We Think Twice Before Importing Any More Foreign Trained Medics Into Our Country?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3543899/72-struck-NHS-doctors-overseas-cases-include-Indian-GP-ran-immigration-scam-Malaysian-medic-secretly-filmed-female-patients.html

[Old_Geezer]

If they were choosing a different career then they'd be ineligible for insisting that they gi into medicine. It's only those not bothering that would be. In any case most medical staff grabbed from other countries would be nursing staff rather than doctors. At a doctoring level the market would ensure sufficient home grown applicants if the conditions and pay are attractive compared to more boring occupations, such as accountancy or banking. Attracting staff from elsewhere in the world only becomes feasible if someone is unwilling to make the career seem attractive and wish to bypass the national labour market by importing/attracting those who will fill the role for less.

[Mamyalynne]

I am wholeheartedly in favour of encouraging youngsters to get into the profession , on that we agree.

[fiction-factory]

Hi Old-Geezer. I wonder if you re aware of how high the academic standards are for medical students to train to be doctors, and how long and demanding the training is. I doubt that pushing JSA claimants into medicine would produce more than a handful of doctors seven or eight years down the line. Maybe we could press gang or persuade some to become paramedics or nurses, but even then I think it's better if they have a desire to work in this area

[Peter Pedant]

Jeremy Hunt announced in the house of commons
that 55% of junior doctors had shown a preference to not to continue training in the UK

so Oz and NZ here they come - see the day time tee vee prog of Young Doctors saving lives in the Antipodes and having fun . ....

and it has all been done before ....

this cohort includes sarah woolaston's daughter
sarah woolaston is chair of the health select committee
her daughter is a junior doctor

[anotheoldgit]

Hopkirk

/// Where was Harold Shipman from? ///

Yes don't criticise the foreigners, even if they are criminals, and nearly three-quarters of them have been struck off the medical register, much better to mention one of ours, but you forgot Dr Crippin, so that makes two.

[Svejk]

^And he was another immigrant. (i think)

[fiction-factory]

>"Yes don't criticise the foreigners, even if they are criminals, and nearly three-quarters of them have been struck off the medical register, "
Are you saying three quarters of all foreign doctors in the UK are struck off, AOG?

[Svejk]

You can play semantics, ff. But it should concern even you that 25% of Uk doctors are foreign, yet they account for 75% of those struck off.

[anotheoldgit]

fiction-factory

/// Are you saying three quarters of all foreign doctors in the UK are struck off,
AOG? ///

The report says 72%, that is nearly three-quarters of doctors struck off the medical register happen to be foreign.

[fiction-factory]

But there's a huge difference between the two statements- yours is true I assume but AOG's is clearly wrong and is at best careless wording or a complete misunderstanding

[fiction-factory]

But you said three quarters of foreign doctors are struck off. That's 75%! Do you know the actual figure? I expect it's less than 5%. Bit of a difference!

[fiction-factory]

So the mail says 330 foreign doctors (i.e. trained abroad) were struck off between 2010 and 2015. That's around 60 a year. Okay it's 60 too many but it's around 2% of the number of foreign doctors coming in each year

[fiction-factory]

In other words around 98% of foreign doctors don't get struck off. This compares unfavourably with UK trained doctors for which the figure will be over 99%. But it hardly suggests we should stop recruiting and go short of doctors.

[anotheoldgit]

fiction-factory

/// But you said three quarters of foreign doctors are struck off. ///

No I didn't I said "nearly three quarters" the actual figure being 72%, which when I went to school was just 3% off three quarters (75%)

[fiction-factory]

Okay you meant 72%. But the report doesn't say that at all. The actual figure seems to be around 2%. You were still miles out.

[Svejk]

Why play games to divert attention from something that should concern everyone.

[fiction-factory]

Yes. Maybe AOG can answer that- why claim something that is completely untrue and draw a conclusion that is completely flawed. Yes, the issue needs to be looked at seriously but we shouldn't allow prejudices to result in an even worse shortage of doctors

[Hypognosis]

More tedious word play from aog?

If 72% of them get struck off, yet there are still thousands of them, actively serving in the NHS, then that implies a large procession of newly arriving ones, to make good the high rate of attrition, yes?

If that is what you mean, then why not say it?

Meanwhile, as Peter ably pointed out, all the doctors and nurses of "an ethnicity to please aog" are being brain-drained away. As well as tge prog he mentioned, they also feature on Wanted Down Under.

We……don't……pay……them……enough!

Like CEOs and bankers like to bleat, if the pay rates aren't kept ludicrously high, they threaten to up sticks and leave for foreign climes, wrecking London's economy.

If the city traders' bonuses are non-taxable (and many multiples of their PAYE'd salary) then it's no surprise we can't pay NHS staff the (globally) "going rate".

[fiction-factory]

Hi Hypgnosis- when you say city traders' bonuses are non-taxable are you suggesting they are using off shore vehicles or other unsavoury tax avoidance, or it's being paid as shares, because if it's income it should be being taxed at the appropriate marginal rate- 45% in the vast majority of cases plus the small NI element.

[fiction-factory]

I'm not convinced our pay rates for doctors are that far out from the global rate- otherwise we wouldn't be able to attract such numbers from abroad.