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By Robin500
#1663021
PeteSpencer wrote:
Lindsayp wrote:I saw that in Waterstones recently and was tempted. Might now get it next time I'm there.

Mind you, saying that junior doctors are getting older, I notice on the sort of A&E reality shows that my wife, bless her, watches, that many consultants seem to be still wearing shorts, ie are very young. I prefer consultants to have white hair and look grizzled from an NHS career or plump on high earnings from private, so is the "reality tv" showing an unreal view?


You misunderstood:
All hospital doctors in training below the grade of Consultant are known as 'junior doctors'.

Way back when, a junior doctor for the more competitive specialities could expect to be between 38 and 40+ before becoming a Consultant. I was 38 having qualified lateish (due to the requirements of Camb Univ) at age 25.

It took, typically 30,000 hours to train, for example a General Surgeon. Consultants in some specialities were often appointed earlier (anaesthetics, psychiatry), aged 32-4.

Now the training is accomplished in 8,000 hours.
Draw your own conclusions.

Peter


I find that quite scary.
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By flybymike
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1663038
My wife gave up the hospital rat race in her early thirties as a surgical registrar, and made the jump over to general practice believing that the grass would be greener on the other side.
She spent the rest of her career wondering what had given her that idea.....
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1663054
flybymike wrote:My wife gave up the hospital rat race in her early thirties as a surgical registrar, and made the jump over to general practice believing that the grass would be greener on the other side.
She spent the rest of her career wondering what had given her that idea.....


A number of our female trainees took paid maternity leave as they were perfectly entitled to do while their (predominantly male) colleagues covered their duties as locums were not allowed/paid for , then gave up medicine to rear their family.

One in particular had three children in this way, then, family complete, jumped ship and became a housewife, her husband being a well paid Consultant elsewhere.

General Practice favours females as it is easier to dip in and out then become part time.

It takes a special dedication to train in some arduous hospital specialities as jumping off the merry-go-round at intervals was more problematical, but doable.

Peter
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By PaulB
#1663059
There are significantly more female hospital consultants (especially in non-surgical specialities) than there were 30 years ago.
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By PeteSpencer
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#1663064
PaulB wrote:There are significantly more female hospital consultants (especially in non-surgical specialities) than there were 30 years ago.


Of course there are: All Deaneries now bend over backwards to accommodate female hospital-bound trainees and will strive to appoint married medical trainees in the same Deanery region (unheard of in 1964).

That doesn't detract from the fact that its still hard to train in the competitive (predominantly surgical) specialities, by the 'conventional' route.

There are also routes ,non-existent 30 years ago, where 'Staff Grade' hospital doctors , who are doctors not on a career ladder and are appointed locally to fulfill a particular need of a hospital but nonetheless very experienced and often from the Asian sub-continent, can be appointed to substantive NHS Consultant posts.

Indeed one such excellent lady, who had worked with me for 10 + years before I retired, replaced me as Consultant when I retired in 2005.

Oh yes, we've come a long way since when after my degree I started clinical studies in 1967, when there was one female in our year intake of 49 at a Hospital not a million miles from H of Parliament

Peter :wink:
PS I've already broken my resolution not to post about the NHS in 2019. Would anyone mind awfully if I backed off here?
#1663449
I hear that 75% of doctors trained abroad are struck off the register. Is that gap filled by “importing” even more in order to thin out the bad ?
By PaulB
#1663454
Bill McCarthy wrote:I hear that 75% of doctors trained abroad are struck off the register. Is that gap filled by “importing” even more in order to thin out the bad ?


Is that 75% of non-UK trained doctors are struck off or 75% of those struck off are not UK trained? The two are not the same.

Most of those who were suspended or erased qualified outside of the UK, this group being overly represented among cases in comparison to all licensed doctors on the medical register (two thirds of licensed doctors on the medical register qualified in the UK and only a third qualified outside of the UK; whereas, among the cases where the sanction was suspension or erasure, the reverse is the case with only 31% qualifying in the UK and the remaining 69% qualifying outside the UK). Previous research has shown that non-UK graduates were also more likely to receive a complaint and have that complaint investigated than UK graduates (SoMEP, 2014). The majority of those qualifying outside of the UK in the cases analysed were
international medical graduates (IMG’s) (57%) as opposed to European Economic Area qualified (12%).


https://www.gmc-uk.org/-/media/document ... 534317.pdf (page 48)

... and from page 8.
....and it should also be remembered that there are over 230,000 licensed doctors and only 119 cases of this nature concluded in erasure or suspension in 2014.
Last edited by PaulB on Mon Jan 07, 2019 9:52 am, edited 2 times in total.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1663457
Bill McCarthy wrote:I hear that 75% of doctors trained abroad are struck off the register. Is that gap filled by “importing” even more in order to thin out the bad ?


No Bill, 75% (actually 69% seeGMC figures linked above) of doctors struck off the register were trained abroad>

A bit of a difference. :roll:

You a stringer for the Daily Mail or sommat?

Interestingly a very high percentage involved fraud or financial irregularities of some kind as opposed to professional misconduct with patients/ clinical ineptitude etc.

Peter :wink:
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By defcribed
#1663488
PeteSpencer wrote:Interestingly a very high percentage involved fraud or financial irregularities of some kind as opposed to professional misconduct with patients/ clinical ineptitude etc.Peter :wink:


Probably because they come from countries where low-level fraud, bribery and financial misconduct is more common and generally seen as a normal perk of the job for doctors, police officers, public officials, etc.

I had a South African lodger once (10+ years ago) who came home with a prescription for anti-depressants after visiting our local GP practice. In a general discussion about the healthcare systems in the UK and South Africa, he revealed that the doctor he'd seen that day had asked him to pay cash for the prescription. Not knowing how the UK system worked, he thought that was normal. My jaw hit the floor when it became clear that the doctor had taken £50 in cash off him in order to write the prescription, which he obviously then had to pay a fee for when he took it to the pharmacist. This doctor (and the rest of the practice) were non-UK qualified. I didn't do anything about it (perhaps I should have) but I did change practice.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1663505
Of course if your S African lodger wasn't a UK resident he was not entitled to an NHS prescription and the GP could quite legally charge him what he liked. for the prescription.

Similarly the pharmacist (and a lot of pharmacies in Midlands are owned by Asian pharmacists-just sayin' )- could charge him what they liked for the
medication.

Peter

Edit:grammar
Last edited by PeteSpencer on Mon Jan 07, 2019 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
By PaulB
#1663512
.... definitely a consequence. Not sure it was unintended, though.