No 86: Crisis Point - In 2 months thousands of GPs could be unemployed

Jun 15, 2024

There are 2 big issues at stake here.

Firstly, approximately 7000 new GP registrars/ trainees will complete their training in Aug 2024. Roughly a third to a half of these newly qualified GPs will be international medical graduates (IMGs).

These IMG GPs need to have a visa to stay in the country and their “training visa” expires as soon as they are fully qualified (in August). The current system allows them 2 months to find a new job with an organisation that is a registered visa sponsor.

If they do not find a GP job in 2 months then they could be deported!

Or you might suddenly find an awful lot of highly qualified people taking whatever manual labour job they can find just so that they can extend their visa and remain in the country long enough to find a GP job.

Leave a comment

The second issue is that this year, there is a crisis in GP recruitment. There are simply not enough GP partnerships that are financially stable enough to be able to take on a newly qualified GP full time.

England has roughly 6000 GP practices.

https://jobs.rcgp.org.uk/ - As of today (15/6/24), there are only 239 jobs listed on the RCGP website.

As I state above, there are roughly 7000 GPs who will soon be looking for work. What are 6761 people going to do in August?

As a member of the RCGP Registrars (AiT) Committee for the last year, I have been priviledged to work with a great team of reps who have been raising this issue locally, regionally and nationaly. It has been raised at every sort of committee, meeting and conference that you can name. Unfortunately, it is a wicked problem and has not been solved yet.

The RCGP and BMA and HEE (NHSE) are all aware of this issue. The DoH, Home Office and Government should all be aware of this issue. However, due to purdah and the election, nothing can be done until we have a new government on the 4th of July.

https://open.substack.com/pub/medicurious/p/no-27-in-2022-where-is-the-best-place?r=p3tn3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Why have I written this?

Firstly, to continue to raise the awareness of this issue. Please help by sharing this article with your colleagues.

Secondly, we need to find a solution for the roughly 3000 IMG GPs who need to avoid deportation this summer. Are you able to help?

Can you register your practice as a sponsor? Do you know of a organisations that are looking for GPs or just qualified doctors and are able to point some IMGs in the right direction?

Do you know someone in the DoH or home office who might be able to help fast track visa applications or change the system so that we do not loose thousands of doctors who we have just trained?

Do you know someone who might be in government in July and who might be able to make this a priority issue for the new government?

After the 4th of July, who ever is in charge in the government will have exactly 30 days to change the system, improve the funding for GPs and overhaul the visa system to prevent this crisis.

Other quick solutions could be to allow doctors to be funded via the ARRS pot or re-instate funding comparable to 2022 levels or re-fund the ICB fellowship schemes?

Thank you for reading. If you have any other solutions then please do leave a comment.

MediCurious

Discussion about this post