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April 19, 2006
Foreign doctors: change of status protest
Serious illnesses are indicated by multiple symptoms. So it is with the NHS. Despite government protestations we have one public issue after another, affecting every aspect of the service. Rarely has the breakdown of a system been so comprehensive.
One issue which has not yet hit the middle pages is the position of junior foreign doctors. For years, they have helped fill gaps in the NHS, coming to Britain for both career advancement and (increasingly in recent years) for higher pay.
In order to facilitate the employment of these doctors, the Home Office invented a ‘no work permit required’ category. They were described as being in ‘training’, while typically earning net salaries of around GBP 20,000 to 30,000 per annum. (I suppose one of the purposes of bureaucracies is to create interesting anomalies.) Those wishing to get this status had to take the so-called PLAB (Professional and Linguistic assessments Board) test, organized by the GMC - a large industry in its own right.
Now there are too many doctors. Not too many from the point of view of patients who can’t get treatment, but from the point of view of overspending NHS officials. One reason for this is that the training scheme for young doctors has been changed (shortened) in such a way that those at the beginning and middle of the process have suddenly had to chase fewer and fewer jobs. Over the past six months it has been common for hospitals to get hundreds of applications for a single job. (This has also affected young British doctors as well and many have left the country to try to get jobs in places like Australia and New Zealand.)
The response from the Home Office has been to end the ‘no work permit required’ status for foreign doctors from July. Unfortunately many young doctors have been caught in the middle of the changes. The BAPIO (British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin) is organizing a protest march on 21 April. They explain:
“We are international medical graduates, who have passed PLAB, and are trying to get fair treatment. Many of us are already here in the UK and are in training posts, but are being treated unequally. Why are we protesting? Because the rules have been changed suddenly, without proper consultation or warning and unilaterally.”
UPDATE 21 April 2006
This story has now been taken up by the BBC and press.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4928954.stm
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4929902.stm
Posted by Simon Holledge at April 19, 2006 07:33 PM
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