A shortage of junior doctors to start work in hospitals this August is forcing the NHS to try to recruit from India.Tighter immigration rules introduced in recent years meant many overseas medics left Britain and returned home.

But the exodus, added to new European regulations limiting the hours of doctors, caused unfilled vacancies.

Attempts to recruit scores of Indian doctors foundered on a disagreement between government departments.

“We pulled the plug on overseas recruitment far too quickly,” said Professor Derek Gallen, who is postgraduate dean of medical training for Wales.

“We didn’t realise what the implications of that action would be two, three or four years down the line,” he added.

The Welsh Deanery is one of four medical training schools across the UK which has been recruiting in India over this year.

The other deaneries involved cover the Severn area, the West Midlands and Northern Ireland. In total, they plan to take more than 100 junior doctors over to the NHS.

The deaneries are looking to recruit in areas such as paediatrics, obstetrics, gynaecology, anaesthesia, as well as accident and emergency.

The need for junior doctors is most acute outside the big metropolitan areas.

The European Working Time Directive, which was fully introduced into the NHS last August, limits doctors to working no more than 48 hours per week and has left gaps on rotas.

Some district general hospitals have had trouble attracting enough staff to cope with the changes leading, in some cases, to services being cut.

In May, the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy had to close its accident and emergency department overnight for a week due to a shortage of junior doctors.

At Erne hospital in Enniskillen, its obstetric and gynecology service had to be suspended for several weeks for the same reason.

The shortage of junior doctors means hospitals are struggling to fill vacancies, and having to devise their own initiatives to recruit doctors wherever they can find them.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/10202803.stm

NHS Hospitals risk staff shortages because of the numbers of junior doctors becoming pregnant after getting their first secure job, medics have warned.
They have urged the Government to make better long term plans so that departments were not left struggling when several doctors go on maternity leave at once.

The British Medical Association’s annual junior doctors conference called on the Department of Health (DoH) to draw up long-term estimates which take account of the fact that the majority of medical graduates are now female, and likely to take maternity leave, while many would go part-time.

They said the DoH needed to draw up better plans, which might mean taking on more trainees, and pool jobs, so that departments were not left struggling when several women went on maternity leave.

Such plans should take account of the fact that women were more likely to consider pregnancy once they had the job security of a four-year specialist training post, at least seven years after starting medical school, she said.

The specialist registrar in genitourinary medicine said it was “incredible” that the health service did not make plans which took account of the growing numbers of women in its workforce.

Latest figures show 56 per cent of successful applicants to medical school were female, and the majority of doctors will be female by 2017, according to a report by the Royal College of Physicians.

Dr Draeger, who has a son Henry, aged 2 and a half, and baby Catherine, of six months, said: “When I was pregnant the first time, out of the 11 trainees on my rotation, four were pregnant at the same time. My consultant was surprised and I said ‘how can you be? You have appointed seven women in their early 30s to a four-year guaranteed job with maternity benefits. Of course some are likely to think it is a good time to get pregnant’.”

Under the current system, a junior doctor entering specialist training, after five years of medical school, and two years of general training, would be aged at least 25. Many are older, with some having taken gap years before or after university, or taken longer to find a training place in the specialist profession.

Dr Draeger said she did not want to see women being turned down for a job because they were of child-bearing age, but that national plans should be drawn up, with pooling of jobs regionally to ensure there were sufficient numbers of medics to avoid shortages in particular departments.

Dr Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee agreed with the calls for better planning, describing pregnancy as “entirely predictable at a population level”.

The conference in London last weekend heard that some medical specialities were hit particularly hard by sudden shortages of women, with 9 out of 10 women working on one paediatric specialist training rota becoming pregnant within a short period, and all planning to return to work on a part-time basis.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Hospitals-face-staff-shortages-as-junior-doctors-become-pregnant

The NHS is facing upheaval and cutbacks as a decade of budget increases comes to an end and £20 billion of savings must be found over the next five years.

Despite pledges from Labour and the Conservatives to protect front line services, there is evidence that their promises may have come too late.

A list of cuts has already been identified – including job losses, banning certain operations, closing casualty departments, downgrading maternity services and reducing the number of junior doctors. But these have been mostly quietly ignored by the three main parties.

The Conservatives pledged to stop all closures until they could be reviewed but, with billions of pounds of savings needed to cope with growing demand, cuts and closures are almost inevitable.

David Cameron emphasised that he was personally in favour of the NHS, after his experiences with his disabled son Ivan, who died last year, to combat arguments that the health service was not safe in Tory hands. The party manifesto contained promises about dentistry and round-the-clock GP services which appear too expensive in the current climate.

Both the major parties were accused of chasing the “fear of cancer” vote. The Tories said they would fund cancer drugs turned down by Nice, the health rationing watchdog, but did not mention drugs for other illnesses such as arthritis or dementia.

Labour said cancer patients would see a specialist and have test results back within a week. The party was criticised for unveiling its manifesto at a new hospital in Birmingham. It is against the rules to use NHS premises for election events.

But Labour pointed out that the hospital was still in the hands of the private finance initiative organisation – a policy which means the NHS will be repaying billions of pounds for new hospitals for decades.

Nick Clegg refused to ring-fence NHS spending given the size of the national debt.

The Liberal Democrat campaign focused on cutting waste on managers, scrapping regional strategic health authorities and pledging more power to communities to direct the health service locally.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/General-Election-2010-cuts-inevitable-as-NHS-must-make-savings