Job security was one of the (ever-dwindling) benefits of a career in medicine, I imagine it’s only going to get worse in the coming years

Im currently a GP trainee. I contemplated doing IMT and even applied and had job offers etc, but withdrew my application. For me it just isn't worth it. Rather do 3 years GP training and then be on the same, if not more then what a consultant is on, without the headache of being under the thumb of a rota co-ordinator.. life is too short..

As an IMG on my way to taking PLAB2 and moving to UK, your channel has been eye opening for me ! You are grounding my fantasies, spotting light on socio-ethical issues and helping find a compass on how to navigate the NHS in the future.

We need people like you making videos and in positions where you can represent and push for change. Thank you

Thank you! This is the content we need from doctors on KZfaq! It's complicated to understand and breaking it down helps a lot - it would be great if there were graphics or an illustration, but I appreciate the video nonetheless!

Fantastic video 👍🏼 thank you for always being so informative!

Thanks for the interview videos Ollie! Got 3 offers to medical schools and I am buzzing for it! (despite the possibility of a lack of training posts in the UK when I graduate )

The only reason i applied for medicine was for the job security and guaranteed employment. This does not look good. 😭

This is a brilliant summary of the impending crisis looming ahead in the NHS. No one in the media ever talks about consultant posts not increasing

Good video! I’m on the reserve list. I think the worst part is even after passing my finals, placements etc there is always a way to make you feel that you aren’t good enough or valued. Added onto this not being able to rank jobs or even plan where I will be living for the next 2 years just increases the stress and uncertainty.

Thanks for the info👏🏾👏🏾

It’s very interesting to compare the graduate medical education system in the UK to other countries. I’m a dual US and Mexican citizen. My father went to medical school in Guadalajara Mexico at one of the top schools in Mexico and went on to become a surgeon. I went to university is the US. When the time came for me to apply to medical school I was offered a full scholarship to his alma mater, he discouraged me from applying to that centralized Mexican system similar to the UK. I went to medical school in the US instead. Much more expensive. I matched at my first residency choice in Honolulu Hawaii and I did my residency and fellowship training there. I think I prefer the free market type of system where you as a competitive applicant can have your pick of the residency program you want and are not just assigned to some random place just to distribute doctors equitably

very interesting. Thanks for sharing

The incentive to move to New Zealand is increasing

great analysis

Thank you for this video, I knew there was issue with numbers and places, but I didn't think it was this bad. As someone who is doing a different degree and was planning on applying to medicine, this kind of throws me off.

I do wonder if this is going to eventually lead to medical schools having to warn students that graduating from medical school does not guarantee that they will become a doctor or they may have to wait and keep applying to the foundation training.

I’m currently on the reserve list and the uncertainty sucks but I’m choosing to be optimistic. Anecdotal evidence is that it mostly works out okay and it’s almost preferable to be at the top of the reserve list then to just scrape the primary list and be guaranteed the less desirable jobs. However as you’ve pointed out this will become less likely as years progress and bottlenecks worsen

Imagine being very highly skilled and have done 5+ years of medical school, to be paid absolutely peanuts and be turfed off to somewhere hundreds of miles away from your family, or not have a job at all. All this in an NHS that’s on its knees, waiting times are through the roof and working conditions are utterly appalling. How on earth are the government getting away with this

I wonder if this is in the US also I’ve heard students here graduating medical schools. This video really got me thinking. Thanks man for sharing.

Hi Ollie, great video. A good friend of mine was on the reserve list with a score of 72.5 (Was undergrad) which I was gobsmacked with. If you slip up on your SJT how on earth will that make these people feel

Wow. Do you think the situation would be different under a different government? Is there anything the NHS can do to turn things around?

I didn’t realise FY1 programmes were now so over subscribed! I think you have over done the shortage of consultant posts though. Most specialities are very under filled and there are lots of jobs available, same for GPs. I’m a dermatologist and I feel I could basically get a job anywhere! Everywhere is recruiting as everywhere is under staffed.

Thanks for the video ! I am due to graduate medical school in the next couple of years. They have actually removed publications/additional qualifications from counting towards f1 applications , so medical students can’t even use that to compete anymore:(

One thing that I haven't seen people talk about is the demographics of the people on the reserve list. (note some of this is based upon anecdotal evidence from my own medical school) Generally speaking from UK graduates there appears to be a higher proportion of candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds, BAME individuals and people with disabilities within the reserve list. This makes sense as the allocation is based upon academic metrics. Studies by the BMA and other sources have shown that BAME medical students (especially black men) perform the poorest at medical school, and are more likely to repeat a year, which brings significant academic penalty. This would result in lower EPM scores (i.e. deciles) and therefore higher chance of being on the reserve list. Furthermore given that many BAME candidates also come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds they are less able to pay for the myriad of paid educational material which other students may have, and given that medics are competitively graded pushes BAME students to the bottom. This situation is also true for those with disabilities, due to stubborn and discriminatory examination practices within medical schools. While most universities are happy to make reasonable adjustments for written assessments, generally speaking no medical school makes adjustments to their clinical assessments (OSCE, PACES etc). That is to say someone with a speech impediment might get extra time in a written exam, but NOT in a history taking OSCE station where they would be at the greatest disadvantage. These aspects make the whole "widening participation" scheme an absolute farce.

I am a UK citizen, and graduated from Italy last year. Brexit has made this worse, before that my internship there would have been accepted and therefore I would have gotten the full registration and skipped UKFPO. However, after Brexit my internship is no longer recognised therefore I need to apply for UKFPO, so I suspect the amount of people applying for UKFPO will get worse. I have spent one year without a job and now I need to apply for UKFPO to start in August 2023 :(

great insightful video. As an IMG with an Irish degree who just got approved for eligibility for fy1 2023 and waiting for the application to open up, what are the chances after successfully sitting SJT that I still won't get a place in UK FY1? My understanding is if they didn't reject my application for eligibility and there is a reserve list, that UKFO was already taken to account that they have enough fy1 spots to accommodate hence why my eligibility was approved, would that make sense?

There is a reserve list because more uk citizens are going abroad to train - as the entrance exams are easier to pass

jheezeee.... very good breakdown though

IMG here. I agree that RLMT has changed things from an immigration standpoint, but the GMC usually accepts international doctors after obtaining full registration in the countries we have trained in originally so most of us apply for and enter at a trust grade SHO or registrar level. It is incredibly rare for an international doctor to apply for the UKFP directly as most countries only issue a medical degree after completion of the mandatory clinical year and this leaves us capable of obtaining full registration with a licence to practice once we meet GMC standards through PLAB/Royal College exams/Medical Training Initiative sponsorship. Also, the visa fees cost a few thousand pounds so we prefer to be able to take jobs where we can afford to pay this and other costs of relocation that are almost never provided by the NHS. The hidden costs of being an international doctor in the UK are not often highlighted when talking about this. Overall, I agree that it is a sensitive topic and can easily become that can of worms you never wished to open.

Yeah nah, Im about to finish my first degree and just from having conversations with doctors at work I'm put off more and more every day. Just think everythingyou have to sacrifice to even get the title. Im gonna go masters in my first degree that will at least put me at band 7 with a fraction of the work and even less risk required

IF there is no prioritisation of normal graduates against IMGs, how do they rank the IMGs? Deciles couldn’t be used..

Yet were always on minimal staffing and denied our annual leave due to staffing issues

I am doctor who has been applying for a job for 5 months and still I haven’t got a job yet. They are asking me for minimum of 6 months of NHS experience. I applied for a clinical attachment and they told me that I have to pay for it in order to just shadow…

Thank you very much for making this video. I was just wondering whether the 800 medical graduates who didn't get a job actually managed to still complete their foundation training and if they weren't able to then what happens? Will they need to take a year out of medicine?

Hi Ollie, after taking a gap year I received an offer for a place at medical school 😄

I might move countries once I reach consultant level.

From the second I heard about the reserve list, the first thing that came to my mind was reserve army of labour. Its such a stupidly short sighted way to cost cut which, like many short sighted cost cutting methods is only creating a worse problem down the road which looking at the behaviour and aims of a conservative government is perfect, eroding a public institution in a way that isn't very visible to the public but insidiously places a higher and higher burden on the people within the NHS until its back finally breaks and the shell can be swept away to be replaced. I don't understand how in a system that relies quite a lot on locums which as a system is terrible for the NHS in the long term in terms of cost is somehow managing to also leave qualified people unemployed - but then again I can, without sounding paranoid, it is an intentional attempt to slowly break the NHS more through negligence than visible decree - say what you want about other political parties or systems, but it has been a long winter of my life growing up to watch conservatives assume power over and over again

I think its ridiculous that the government has basically opened the floodgates to graduates from the entire world; what you shall be left with is a flight of UK trained doctors to greener pastures in the Anglosphere and an NHS staffed almost fully by international staff, this will surely lead to a drop in overall quality of doctors (nobody can deny that UK graduates are far better suited to UK practice). Other countries are far more protectionist over their own medical graduates and why are government spending so much subsidising medical training, when they dont even make an effort to retain them!?

So a US citizen who did FY1 and FY2 is bottom of the list

Hello sir your KZfaq channel is very great & informative I'm a fifth year medical student as an IMG do u recommend me to apply for UKFP plz need ur guidance

They’ve all been allocated positions in foundation schools...

Will this affect those IMGs who are aspiring to join ST3 directly post MRCS? If so how, and any solutions to overcome this issue?

I thought there was a cap on the number of medical school places offered at UK universities - is that still in place? Does the cap apply to international students too?

people at the top of the reserve list are getting better jobs than people at the bottom of the primary list which is causing unimaginable salt for people who didn't do so well in the SJT but not bad enough to be on the reserve list (me). I'm happy that people on the reserve list are getting to go where they want, but I'm still sad about being sent to the hebrides ;( oh well, maybe I'll love it there but I don't know if I want to continue training in the UK. training is so long in this country and competition is increasing rapidly (anaesthetics bottleneck and the insane CST portfolio arms race among others). will there even be a job for me by the time I reach that point? I'd be happy to retrain into something like software engineering and leave medicine, I hope more students and doctors will consider switching from this career too. the govt can't keep treating doctors so badly and expect us to keep taking it

Great video! ButI got a question, does that mean that the NHS is now oversaturated with doctors? Or is the situation due to mismanagement from the government side?

As an incoming first-year student, in 5 years, there will be more graduates competing for fewer places. Would you say doing well in medical school is becoming more important in order to land the ideal job?

Perhaps it's time the government removes the NHS monopoly and allows training in accredited private healthcare institutions.

All I hear about when I've been on placement in my clinical years is about rota gaps, ridiculous battles with rota management to get very basic annual leave confirmed with huge amounts of notice, I know that this isn't always at the Foundation year grade, but I can't understand how it's a difficult task to find spaces for graduates. If HEE or whomever gave the funding for extra medical school places, why isn't that funding being transmitted further up the ladder?

I think they will keep trying to expand and create more jobs because the Uk is extremely understaffed when it comes to doctors, so I think its a good problem for them to have, in fact i think they're hoping to have more people on reserve list so they can create more jobs

As far as I know IMGs don't compete with UK graduates at the level of foundation program .. IMGs only go to the uk after finishing their foundation training in their own countries .. Your point might be valid at the specialty training level ..

It was 500 last year and we all got jobs.

Also i just read an article that says the uk is understaffed by as much as 50,000 doctors....so they desperately need more doctors

Mmmm I thought South Africans were going through the most with a lack of jobs for doctors but atleast they do try to accommodate us post grad school.but the problems sound similar at the end of the day

How can we say no places for UK trained doctors and still be hiring from abroad? Makes no sense

medical unemployment 😶😶

Hi Ollie, do you know much about the IFST process? I've applied this year and it has been approved but haven't heard since for a while on any updates? thank you!

Is this the same for dental students

Guess I will go abroad. Uk is not that cool anyway

A few observations on your interesting perspective: firstly no doctor has ever been made redundant so you have unparalleled job security in that respect; secondly the huge demand to get a place at medical school is driven perhaps not always by altruism but by the knowledge that the prospects for earning a great deal of money are far better than in many other professions (average for GP’s working full time is north of £105 Pa ; consultants at top of scale with a basket of Clinical Excellence Awards over £175k (before private work is taken into account) ; thirdly the likelihood of ever being dismissed is negligible thanks to the excellent negotiating skills of the BMA and a weak NHS management; fourthly the high status of the profession in the eyes of the populace at large gives doctors huge kudos. So, don’t get too depressed; you’ll never be faced with being put on furlough.

long day

Jesus why would anyone want to become a doctor nowadays

This is because they’ve opened up the applications to foreign doctors/graduates and we have no priority over them, it’s a joke. You saying that they’re not coming over here and stealing UK jobs is factually not correct anymore. I know 2 good students in my year who are on the list and it’s absolutely mad.

Too much hand movement, copy of ali abdaal told him too, calm down on the hands ✋

Welcome to the real world. In the real world we all have to apply for jobs.not everyone gets what they apply for. Medical graduates are no different. There is no such thing as a guarantee of employment..and its about time that medical graduates understand this. Too many aspire to become "doctors" for the prestige...money and job security....thank god!!! Sense has prevailed...it's looking very much like its not happening the way ollie and many of his colleagues had hoped it would. You chose medicine..so wear it!!!