Why are Doctors LEAVING the NHS? 😨

this is going to be quite a controversial video and it's one that we hesitated to make but we think actually it's quite important for the general public and especially for aspiring medics to know about the nhs is in crisis an increasing number of junior docs are now leaving the nhs before even completing their training and this is something that we're seeing a lot of conversations and debates about especially on twitter for example another thing is even medical students before even becoming a doctor are actually considering leaving the profession the very profession that they're training up to be at medical school we're gonna hear from medical students from across the uk on their insights as to why junior doctors are leaving vhs this video took us a lot of time so i'd really appreciate it if you just smash that subscribe button and leave a like and without further ado let's get into it what most people don't know is that a junior doctor is any doctor that's not a consultant level so that's all the way from when you graduate medical school as a foundation year level all the way up to registrar level anything before being a consultant so the majority of doctors are there for junior doctors and depending on specialty you'll be a junior doctor so when you graduate medical school anywhere between five to ten years and that's again dependent on the specialty since 2008 junior doctors in the nhs have seen a real term speak out of up to 30 this means that junior doctors today effectively earn 30 less than what junior doctors earned 14 or 15 years ago so how did this happen so inflation is the general increase in price of commodities in our economy so as inflation increases or as prices go up wages or salaries should also go up by the same amount so that people can afford to buy the same things however over the past 15 years as inflation and prices have risen junior doctor wages have not increased by the same amount resulting in an effective pay cut other issues like the nhs bursary which is given to fourth and fifth year medical students not being sufficient enough have also been highlighted recently and i would recommend checking out the hashtag livable nhs bursary campaign if you're interested in finding out more all of this along with the cost of living crisis that we're facing right now means that junior doctors are not paid nearly enough for their efforts after working really hard through the pandemic many believe it's time to fight for a better future and most recently the bma or the british medical association announced that a strike is inevitable and the last union doctor strikes were in 2016. so one of the most commonly cited reasons for why doctors are leaving the nhs is simply the extraordinarily long working hours so doctors are on average contracted to work around 40 hours per week and this is going to depend on your specialty your seniority and a range of other factors such as if you're working during the day or during the night however either way doctors are very frequently exceeding these numbers by a long way with a study finding that over 55 percent of doctors are doing additional unpaid work on a weekly basis so this can lead to disruptions in your work life balance your sleep and your relationships with another study finding that only 26 percent of doctors consider themselves to have a good work-life balance and this is further compounded by a very chaotic rotor for a lot of doctors which means that one day you might be working early morning shift and another day you'll be working a late night shift a major reason for doctors leaving the nhs is because of burnout and that can be broadly defined by three main factors one feeling negativity towards your job two feeling exhausted because of your job and number three having reduced professional efficacy which basically means nothing as if you can do your job properly and of course because of the cover 19 pandemic these things of burnout have only been exacerbated burnout is a really important issue and it's something that actually is going to affect the majority of healthcare professionals at some point in their lives it's a really good reflection it's a really good insight and speaking of reflections i'd highly recommend you check out our medicine online work experience course it's absolutely free and it contains over 50 plus videos of anonymized patient case studies on a variety of different specialties from oncology to a e to gp to neurology to public health and we're constantly reviewing and adding to it it's completely free so be sure to check it out back to the video so the nhs and broken system so why may doctors leave the nhs well i think it stems from serious star shortages which have been sort of mounting the nhs for years and this has really been driven by the inadequate workforce planning and lack of government accountability which includes insufficient funding and infrastructure to train enough new doctors and we can really see this in sort of emergency units gp surgeries out there in the uk and i'm just going to talk to you a bit about one of the emergency units so dr rob perry here is quoted to say here a lot of our staff are increasingly burned out and morale is a long-term problem because we're not able to deliver the standard of care that we believe our patients deserve and this can be reflected in the statistics from this hospital around 10 886 patients were waiting longer than 12 hours to be treated in any in that single month and realistically the target is no one should be waiting for more than 12 hours and these are some of the worst waiting times in emergency units we also have a lot of gps wanting to to lead direct patient care in the next five years i think it's around a third of gps in england plan on doing that and a lot of representatives have been trying to urge the government to take action because a mass exodus of doctors leaving the gps would cause serious uh jeopardy to patient care and when we look at vacancies official health service vacancy figures show it remains short of more than 9 000 medics and 40 000 nurses and it's quite sad to see because a lot of hospital bosses are forcing last minute shifts changes on junior doctors and trainees below the level of consultant up to the level of senior registrar because you know staff sickness and scarcity of local medics has left them struggling to ensure patients safety is maintained overnight and you know this this all takes all this sort of a really really big toll on a doctor's physical and mental well-being i think that when someone is studying to become a doctor as a medic you're learning all this really detailed information you're you're finding about treatments the management plans the investigations for hundreds of different conditions you know all this really rich knowledge and you feel prepared in a way to become a doctor and then if you become a doctor and then you're stuck with sitting at a computer um ordering scans ordering blood tests for hours every day it just doesn't seem rewarding there's no patient facing uh interaction which is what you were expecting when you spent all those years training and so this sudden realization that actually you've learned all this stuff and you've expected all this patient interaction just to have that knot come to fruition as soon as you become a doctor can be rather almost heartbreaking and that can really be behind someone's decision to leave the nhs in my opinion there are many reasons why junior doctors are leaving the nhs one of those reasons is due to a lack of senior support senior support can be hard to come by on wards and can lead to junior doctors taking on much more responsibility than they are trained for also when issues are escalated do your doctors feel like they're not being cared up or being taken seriously all the while they feel that there is little recognition from the nhs on their behalf another reason why doctors are leaving the nhs is because of the high competition rates competition to get jobs to get spaces and this starts at sixth form where there are so many applicants but such few medical school places people often say that getting into medical school is the hardest part but that simply is not true anymore because getting into medical school is only the first step and there are more medical school places than junior doctor positions recently you might have seen that 800 medical students who passed their exams did not get a foundation job of their choice and were later accommodated in places that they didn't even apply to but the bottleneck doesn't stop here there are more foundational posts than specialty training posts and more specialty training posts than registrars than consultants and so on this bottleneck has led to so many doctors who have actually passed the exams to move on to their next level of training just stay in the same post because there are simply no training jobs imagine doctors who have passed all of the exams gone through over 10 years of training to become a consultant and then just simply don't find a consultant job that is what the nhs looks like right now that is why so many doctors are choosing to leave and go to other countries where the competition isn't as high and where they're guaranteed a job as long as they complete their training another reason that junior doctors are leaving the nhs is due to the location barriers the lack of location flexibility means that locations can sometimes dictate what kind of specialties junior doctors are going into if they're unable to move or require some stability in their early careers it may be difficult for them to move their entire lives to a new area for a specialty that they would like to practice additionally if they get placed in a larger january it may be difficult to travel to and from hospital placements in a safe or appropriate manner so i think one of the reasons why doctors could be leaving the nhs is because of the lack of perks that come with the job i know a lot of employers that medics typically go to offer things like house travel insurance all the insurance is covered for they get credit cards they get gym memberships um just just to name a few and the list is really extensive whereas with the nhs despite working in a healthcare system you're not getting any healthcare benefits there's no private health insurance or anything like that um so it's easy to see why that could be behind someone's decision to leave the nhs private practice the dark side of medicine something that isn't as well known is that only consultants can actually practice privately and whether doctors should practice privately is something that we'll cover in a later video what i do want to cover though is that for junior doctors it's something that's not available to them junior doctors can't practice privately what they can do is actually locum locoming is where a doctor can basically work temporarily and fill any gaps on a rotor basis any shortages that exist locuming pays relatively well compared to salary doctor it comes with a variety of cons and that includes either feeling isolated not supported and also having irregular work schedules a survey of doctors leaving the nhs has sadly found that bullying is still a major issue for a significant number of doctors in the nhs and we can speculate that this might be because the nhs operates on a hierarchical system where on your team there will be people who are superior to you and there will be doctors who will abuse this in order to make other doctors feel uncomfortable there are also interestingly differences between different specialties so for example obstetrics and gynecology has one of the highest percentages of bullying among those doctors leaving nhs in addition doctors who have been identified to have a fitness to practice the issue in the past also report much higher levels of bullying so the difficulty lies in how do you address this you're operating within a nationwide system and yet bullying is a individual problem on a case-by-case basis so this sadly is a problem that remains unsolved in addition to bullying abuse from patients in the general public remains a problem with doctors frequently reporting cases of sexual harassment and other forms of harassment as well which can majorly impact your general well-being as a doctor relocating to practice abroad as a doctor is becoming an increasingly popular option amongst medics from as early as medical school there are a range of reasons for doctors wanting to move abroad including better pay better working conditions quicker training um more hands-on work compared to the admin heavy job of junior doctors in the uk and overall a better work-life balance okay guys thanks so much for watching all the way up to the end this was quite a controversial video but we think ultimately it was one that's going to be quite worthwhile and interesting to you guys the viewers if you did enjoy that don't forget to smash that subscribe and like button it's the best way of telling us that you're enjoying these videos and also to stay up to date with our latest and best medicine application advice great seeing you guys and see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Aspiring Medics

Views: 197,296

Keywords: Get into Medicine, Medicine Personal Statement, Medicine Personal Statement Oxford, Medicine Personal Statement Cambridge, Medicine Personal Statement Analysis, Medicine Interview, Medicine Medical Ethics, Medicine Current Afairs, Medicine Interviews

Id: lJoytj-KOko

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2022