Interesting. I’ve posted the following comments:
“Matt, thanks for this excellent piece – it is indeed a scandal that we are poaching doctors from poor countries.
There’s an angle you don’t touch on, but it’s apt that the image of a rejected potential medical student is that of a man. Since the 1970s the medical schools have preferenced female candidates over male candidates, and the ratio of medical students has been 2:1 in favour of women for half a century.
Women who complete medical studies are more likely than the men never to practise medicine. Female doctors are far more likely than male doctors to work part-time, whether or not they have children. They tend to to choose certain lines of work, and not work unsocial hours. The results are most obvious in the GP service, where over 50% of doctors are female and the proportion is rising as older male doctors retire. The GP service has long been in crisis as a direct result. Much of the rest of the NHS has been in crisis as a direct result.
A proportionate and rational measure would be for state-funded medical training to be limited to men for 20 years, longer if necessary.”
If you’d like email notifications of our new blog pieces, please enter your email address in the box near the top of the right-hand column and click ‘Subscribe’.
We shall shortly be posting this piece on our X channel.
Our YouTube channel is here.
Justice for Men & Boys 
Exactly so! As we busy ourselves with rigorous selection according to Diversity “targets”, “emotional intelligence” and progressive “values”. We import Doctors with appalling English language skills and the social skills and empathy of a lump of concrete. Not all of them but caring for an very elderly mother and wife with long term illnesses I have a lot of experience of the NHS and being unable to communicate or have zero “bedside manner” is not uncommon. In not a few cases the nurses have to de-brief afterwards otherwise one has no idea what just happened.
I hope Reform really do get a grip on the NHS. One good result of the Doctor’s strikes is the status of Doctors as saints is slipping. Generally the nation seems to treat the NHS as if it is Santa Claus. To suggest some logic is applied is akin to telling children Santa doesn’t exist. For instance given the absolute predictability of “winter pressures” (certainly for the each of the 30 years of my career working in a Joint post with the NHS) how come every single year it is “caught out” and faces its peak demand with its lowest staffing levels? (particularly over the two weeks or so of the “Holidays” the GP services practically pack up!). Surely given the known pressures you’d insist your staff were in! “Being Family friendly” is for the quiet times you’d think. The whole thing needs a massive dollop of common sense rather than the magical platitudes that seem preclude any and all logical discussion. Its not as if there aren’t examples of publicly funded health services across the channel that contrive not to have an annual crisis in Winter! Nor lose practically all their non hospital services for two weeks or so in Winter. And manage to deliver GP services 24 hrs 7 days a week! But it will take the equivalent of saying the NHS is not Santa Claus, its a service to people and its not run by saints and elves but people.
LikeLike