Aussies on the look out for UK’s junior doctors |
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Sun, 21 Aug 2005 13:05
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LONDON - The British Medical Association's magazine BMA News has reported that Australia is aggressively looking to recruit junior doctors from the UK in a bid to make up for the shortage in that country. This news would be particularly heartening for young doctors who have not found a position in the latest recruitment round in the UK.
These junior doctors are struggling to find training places and are facing unemployment and are therefore putting their careers on the backburner. Australia has now stepped in to resolve this dilemma faced by the junior doctors and has offered them places in the health department in that country. The NHS has ceased to become an option for these doctors due to the abundance of candidates for some posts like that of the senior house officers or SHO's. In fact there were over a 1,000 applicants for these posts and thus doctors are on the look out for opportunities and Australia and New Zealand appear to be favored destinations.
Commenting on this latest twist to the problem of finding training places for junior doctors, Dr Simon Eccles, chairman of the BMA's junior doctors committee said, "Our research shows that most junior doctors would consider leaving the country if, in future, they were unable to find an appropriate training post. Unfortunately, Australia's gain is our loss. The irony is that Britain is desperately short of medical staff. If we don't improve our workforce planning, it's inevitable that many more doctors will head overseas."
The NHS as reported previously is struggling to make ends meet and is in the red as far as the balance sheets are concerned. The public has had to wait long and hard in order to receive attention that is sometimes too late in coming. In such a scenario if the country's talent pool migrates to foreign locations in search of jobs, it is a sad commentary indeed. A Department of Health spokeswoman was dismissive of this emigration problem, "The majority who go abroad come back to England to continue their careers in the NHS, enriched by their overseas experiences," she said.
Australia has been on a recruiting drive and only this week said that it needs around 20,000 skilled workers to take up positions as electricians, carpenters, accountants, bricklayers and chefs as well as doctors. Officials are confident of attracting up to 3,000 doctors at the Opportunities Australia Expo in London in October. "Recently we have been receiving reports from the UK about the difficulty doctors have in finding positions in hospital. The state government has decided to make a concerted effort to recruit those doctors and give them a better chance of furthering their careers," observed Scott Oster, a business and migration development officer for the state of South Australia.
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