Disgruntled doctors should stop wasting their time striking
Reportedly, 15 per cent of these doctors have taken 'hard steps' towards leaving UK practice. I have taken these very steps – attending interviews in Australia, visiting schools for my children, and exploring different neighbourhoods.
For the time being, family commitments have led me to remain in the UK. According to the GMC report, one in eight (12 per cent) of doctors are considering leaving the UK to work abroad, with nearly one in five (19 per cent) said to be considering quitting the profession altogether.
Of course, there is always a gulf between stated intentions and ultimate actions. But the question still remains: why are UK medics so unhappy?
Hot on the heels of recent junior doctor strike action, these statistics are yet another reminder of the precarious state of the nation's health service. Many doctors find their working conditions unsustainable and are disillusioned by the substandard care they are forced to deliver to patients.
So much so many will choose to leave friends and loved ones, moving ten thousand miles across the globe, in order to work in better resourced hospitals and GP surgeries (where they also receive better pay). Australia – the main beneficiary of the NHS's failure to retain its medical trainees – naturally welcomes British doctors: with streamlined pathways for GPs to relocate, and recruitment agents advertising at picket lines outside NHS hospitals.
The exodus of UK doctors from the NHS has been celebrated by Nicole Higgins, the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. She has stated: 'They've made a huge difference to rural and regional Australia… to our workforce as a whole.'
I have been told by friends that in some Australian hospitals, at least half of the doctors in the emergency departments are British-trained, NHS escapees.
The 'brain drain' of doctors leaving the NHS is estimated to cost the UK taxpayer billions of pounds annually; it is a symptom of a health service on its knees. It goes without saying that Streeting and Starmer need to get a grip on the retention of the UK's medical workforce. However, ongoing disputes between the government and the British Medical Association suggest there is no treaty on the horizon. The irony is that many of the doctors who choose to emigrate to Australia continue to support the founding principles of the NHS; despite finding the conditions in the UK intolerable, and preferring to work in a mixed public-private health care system that is primarily funded through health insurance.
Arguably, disgruntled British doctors should stop wasting their time striking for higher pay and start demanding root and branch reform of the NHS. International comparisons suggest they would be able to deliver higher quality healthcare while potentially standing to benefit from better pay and conditions.
Yet the ideological hold the NHS has on the population, successive governments, and doctors past and present, means that these arguments rarely gain any traction.
Instead British doctors lament the 'underfunding' of the NHS while complaining about poor pay and unsafe patient care. The Labour Government find themselves struggling to square the circle of providing a universal, state-funded healthcare system which does not bankrupt the public finances. Meanwhile, the Australians look on in bemusement and rub their hands in glee.
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