More than 1,000 UK doctors want to quit NHS over handling of pandemic
If this does come to pass, bearing in mind the already severe shortage of GPs in rural settings, even though most of these doctors wont be GPs it does not bode well.
Over 1,000 doctors plan to quit the NHS because they are disillusioned with the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and frustrated about their pay, a new survey has found.
The doctors either intend to move abroad, take a career break, switch to private hospitals or resign to work as locums instead, amid growing concern about mental health and stress levels in the profession.
“NHS doctors have come out of this pandemic battered, bruised and burned out”, said Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, president of the Doctors’ Association UK, which undertook the research. The large number of medics who say they will leave the NHS within three years is “a shocking indictment of the government’s failure to value our nation’s doctors,” she added. “These are dedicated professionals who have put their lives on the line time and time again to keep patients in the NHS safe, and we could be about to lose them.”
In all, 1,758 doctors across the UK responded when DAUK undertook an online survey among its members. It asked: “Has the pandemic and the government’s treatment of frontline doctors during the pandemic impacted your decision to stay or leave the NHS?”. Almost seven in ten – 1,214 (69%) – said that it had made them more likely to leave the health service, while 26% said that it had not.
When asked “where do you see yourself working in the next one to three years?”, almost two-thirds of doctors – 1,143 (65%) – said they would be leaving the NHS. That finding has prompted renewed concern about NHS understaffing, as the service in England already has vacancies for 8,278 doctors, according to the most recent official figures.