Brexit Exposes the Government’s Failure to Train Specialist NHS Doctors, reports Byline Times.
Dr Ayan Basu, DAUK Vice-Chair, says,
“Recent political calls to ‘train more doctors’, are not enough. We need to ‘train more specialty doctors’. Enabling greater numbers to develop into specialty doctors means more training posts, which requires sufficient funding.”
Dr Basu also referenced the bottleneck in progressing from F2 to specialist training, saying “specialty entry ratios are growing steeper”.
He added that “due to fewer posts” being available, “UK-qualified and UK-trained doctors leave the UK to broaden their outlook in Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, citing better pay and work conditions”.
Dr Basu added,
“post-Brexit slowing of medical supplies and staff recruitment from the EU means decreased systemic capacity in the NHS. For decades we depended on sufficient immigration of overseas doctors. EU-trained doctors could become senior clinicians to bolster the NHS”.
He further emphasised that the effects of Brexit on the NHS aren’t limited to the number of staff. “Rising poverty, due to socio-economic fall-out from Brexit, is a social determinant of health and disease,” he said. “That means greater demand for NHS services and poorer patients may be disproportionately affected by NHS sustainability issues, compounding the social dimension of Brexit.”
Read the full article here.
