A piece in today’s Times by Chris Smyth, Health Editor:
The NHS is to send GP recruitment missions to Australia aiming to tempt doctors away from the beach with relocation packages worth up to £18,500.
British doctors who have fled the NHS will be urged to return in its hour of need while it is also hoped that Australian GPs will be attracted by the chance to work in England.
Regulators have agreed to streamline competence checks because Australian requirements are so similar and recruitment agencies have been hired to sell the NHS to doctors Down Under.
Waiting times for GPs’ appointments are getting longer because of a shortage of family doctors that health chiefs accept is one of the most serious problem facing the NHS. Numbers have dropped by 1,000 since ministers pledged to raise them by 5,000 and the GPs who remain complain they are ever-busier dealing with the demands of an ageing population. Hundreds of European and Indian doctors have been brought over by previous recruitment drives and NHS England is now turning its focus further afield.
Dominic Hardy, its director of primary care delivery, said: “It’s no secret the NHS needs to recruit more GPs, so it makes sense to head to Australia where doctors’ skills, training and high levels of care closely match those of their British counterparts.”
Two British recruitment agencies have been signed up to lead the drive. “Our message is that we want to encourage doctors to think about practising as a GP in England and we will support them all the way,” Mr Hardy said. “We are pulling out all the stops to solve the shortage of GPs.”
The NHS is promising an “enhanced relocation package” worth up to £18,500 for doctors moving from Australia, which it insists is not a golden hello. Visa costs will also be covered and Australian doctors will also be eligible for an existing £3,500-a-month bursary scheme for refresher training for GPs returning to the NHS after a break.
The Royal College of GPs (RCGP) has also agreed to streamline an approvals process that currently takes a year to about three months for Australian doctors. Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, its chairwoman, said: “We know their training and experience is similar to that of the UK and there are doctors wanting to come to the UK but it has always been an arduous process for them. The streamlined system is intended to cut out a huge amount of bureaucracy, and bring these doctors into placements and work much quicker than before.”
Last week the college warned that 2.4 million patients were in danger of losing their GP as surgeries closed because overworked doctors retired early. Una Lane of the General Medical Council said it had worked with the RCGP to streamline the process.
Women have been preferenced over men with respect to medical school admissions since the 1970s, when Dr Vernon Coleman (the first ‘TV doctor’, and bestselling author) predicted the problems that would ensue from the policy, because of the gender gap in work ethic, in addition to women taking time off to raise children.
All the problems he predicted have come to pass. British men pay almost three-quarters of the income tax collected in this country, so they’re paying £13,500 of the £18,000 being spent to lure Australian GPs to the UK, directly attributable to the policy of preferencing women over men for medical school places.
70% of medical students today are female. I was intending to write a longer commentary on why the NHS needs to recruit doctors from overseas, but spotted a comment from “Righttorant”, which nails it:
And all because the lady loves… Part-time work.
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Justice for Men & Boys 