Junior doctors face tougher competition as foreign applicants apply for training posts

A court ruling that abolished priority places for doctors trained in the UK on top of changes to application procedures will leave three junior doctors battling for each training post.

The Court of Appeal ruling means that priority cannot be given to UK applicants so doctors trained in the UK are also competing against those from across the world who want to come to Britain to work.

There are three levels of training places and in the new system doctors who already have a place are guaranteed a place on the next rung up if they pass certain tests.

The DoH said around 10,000 junior doctors are already in these so-called "run-through" training places, which were introduced last year to give doctors more security.

If they miss out on a training post, doctors cannot go on to become a GP or a specialist.

"There are around 9,000 posts for around 23,000 estimated applicants, that's what the Department of Health has told us," said Sian Thomas of NHS Employers.

"One could argue that the more competition you have, the better quality you will get.

"It is a good thing for patients that there is competition for jobs - it should mean they get the best doctors wherever they live.

But she said "taxpayers money is going to waste" if doctors who had started their training in the UK could not find posts.

The recruitment process for jobs starting in August begins today.

Ram Moorthy, the chairman of the British Medical Association's junior doctors committee told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the excessive competition for places faced by junior doctors was due mainly to the large number of posts filled last year.

But he said it also resulted from bad planning by the Department of Health, which had continued to recruit doctors from overseas at the same time as increasing the number of medical graduates from UK universities.

Many of the non-EU nationals applying for training places in this year's round have been working within the NHS for some time, he pointed out.

Mr Moorthy said: "What you have got to realise is that these non-EU doctors have been here for a number of years and have given a commitment to the UK and the NHS.

"We have got to be equitable to these people who have made a commitment. We can't move the goalposts halfway through to people who have made their lives in the UK.

"This is all down to poor workforce planning at government level over a number of years. We have known we have been increasing our numbers - it takes six years to train a junior doctor.

"To suddenly say that this is something we have never realised before is completely and fundamentally wrong, and that's why at the BMA we fully support the international doctors in making sure that they are treated equally with the British graduates in this recruitment round."

Ms Thomas told Today: "We now have more UK graduates coming through the system. Some of these graduate numbers increased dramatically five or six years ago. They are now double the number they were perhaps 10 years ago.

"It's a good thing. We should be very pleased and proud that in this country we have a system whereby we have a good supply of our own UK graduates for the NHS.

"We have always recruited from overseas. We have over the last 20 years relied on these people and welcomed people from around the world into our training schemes.

"What the Department of Health now has to do is to work out how we manage this tension because it certainly can't be right that the UK taxpayer funds many more junior doctors in training that are then lost to the NHS."

Mr Moorthy added: "It is vital that we can optimise these posts, because these are doctors who have invested a huge amount of time and effort in treating their patients and have shown their high levels of skills and aptitude. It would be a disaster if these very dedicated people are lost to the NHS."