'parthasd' recently contributed to the egroup with this mail. it paints a grim but realistic picture of our future in the UK.
I usually try not to discourage people, but recently I have had to listen to people who came here with an unrealistic expectation of the future, and now several thousand pounds down the line they can only say that people are getting jobs because they have 'catch'. They scoff at simple suggestions to try their best by saying things like, 'from your position it must be nice to give such advice, but the reality is quite different ....'
Bottom line, don't come here expecting sympathy. You come here to struggle and u shall have to fight till the last penny.
Enough ranting, here's parthasd's view:
I am completely new to this group. I am in the UK for last 7-8
years. Don't quite know about the recent changes in the PLAB test.
But one thing is certain, things are definitely getting more and
more difficult. And of course there are exceptions.
MMC (modernising medical curriculum) has changed the whole equation
in the last 2-3 years. The situation is going to worsen further in
the next two years. Currently it is extremely difficult to get a
training SHO job. [My last SHO (London graduate, white AND a lady)
could not find a job from August and headed south (Australia).] Same
is going to be the case with Type 1 SpR (higher specialty training)
jobs in two years time once the current foundation trainees will be
ready for the 'seamless' higher specialty training. What they will
be able to do after becoming a 'junior' consultant is everybody's
guess.
Anyway, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh took the bold (!)
step last week to warn all overseas candidates about planning for
an 'exit strategy' or to take up non-training career grade post for
the rest of their lives. They predict that there will be about 500
training numbers nationwide for general surgery and 1,500 UK
qualified candidate alone aspiring for a career in general surgery.
Therefore, only 1 in 3 UK graduate aspiring a surgical career will
actually make it through. Although the RCS 'warns' foreign
graduates, I suspect, the much hyped 'equal opportunity' will be
tactically thrown out of the window.
UK is not going to be the ideal place to invest your time and money
unless you are not already in the system (by that I mean, you are
here in a training post and having done with all the 'M' exams/
research/ publications etc).
Surgical specialties have traditionally been more difficult than
medical specialties. This is going to be the case for the forseeable
future.
Sorry to give a gloomy picture but unfortunately this is the real
situation. Hope this helps.
Posted by nrsmc
at 8:10 PM GMT