I don’t know why I feel the need to rant about this at 4:25 in the morning, but it is a subject that has been on my mind a lot in the last few months. Continue to read at your own peril.
As a practicing NHS doctor for just over 5 years, I think I can fairly say that the outlook for the NHS is looking fairly grim (you know, just to state the completely obvious). I came to this country a timid F2 level doctor, having just completed a 1 year internship in Dubai, and found myself having to quickly adjust to the so called ‘adult’ life (bills, HMRC, tax, HMRC, exams, HMRC, budgeting, HMRC, national insurance, GP, HMRC, find a job, relocate, tell HMRC - you get the picture). I adored my work as a doctor (with all its' trials and tribulations), and I also had the advantage of being a Sudanese doctor with a mostly British background - both my parents were doctors and moved to England just before I was born to escape the Civil war in the Gulf (1980s - 1990s). They spent their early days locuming but gradually worked their way up to consultant posts in gastroenterology and paediatrics. I think my dad had been a practicing consultant for only a few years but before I knew it, we had suddenly packed up and left our house in Liverpool to permanently reside in Sudan.
As you can imagine, I did not take this move very well. I had no idea why it had been necessary. Both my parents had good jobs, they were able to support both two daughters and also various members of the extended family back in Sudan. But pose this question to my dad at the time, and ask if he would ever go back, and you’d be met with a frown and a grunt of disapproval. ‘England? Pffff... never’.
I have only now, almost 18 years later, begun to understand why my dad rejects every job opportunity that comes his way (from the NHS). Today he told me he has been hounded almost weekly by calls from random British numbers, offering very high rates for locum work in the UK. He’s not sure he wants to do it, and I find this particularly interesting considering the fact that when he did work as a doctor here, the NHS was in much better shape than it is today. He is aware, through watching the news, that prospects for training as a doctor here are rapidly declining, and spent all of last year pushing me to complete GP training so I could find better work in Canada.
Needless to say neither he nor mum were happy when I told them I had quit the program one year after I’d started it, and was considering something new. I found myself asking; what went wrong?
When I questioned why he persevered and insisted I find another training job, I realised that the answer was something I’d known all along. He knew the struggle of living in a foreign country and all the ins and outs of being employed in the UK. In his eyes, being a doctor was a way to make it easier - he shares the belief of almost every Sudanese parent I know (his generation at least), that the only way they can ensure their children can live a productive, comfortable life is by dedicating their time and efforts towards medicine. We’d better keep our heads down, work hard and thank the Lord because every other field of work will be wrought with hardships and financial instability.
But it is this nostalgia that is the root of a lot of problems facing my generation of Sudanese doctors, and certainly those of other ethnicities as well. I have, on occasion, asked a few different colleagues from work if they would let their children study medicine - only a small percent said they would never (and a large proportion of them where white). Some felt that medicine was too much of a struggle as a career but they could see no other way to guarantee financial independence for their kids. Only one was quite open about the fact that all of his kids were to study medicine, and if not, dentistry or other related fields.
I feel that this is something that requires a massive change of an almost sacred practice for some families. There are a few doctors in younger generations who are more aware now that medicine is not what it used to be. They know that most health care professionals live a life of stress, anxiety and a never ending cycle of oncalls and missed weekends. I will not even begin to talk about the impact of some of the decisions our government has made with the NHS in the last 5 or 6 years, or the funding issues and capped salaries, or the way the population of NHS doctors has been dropping like flies - that is a conversation for another day. I can only hope this awareness is something that I see continue to grow, because if something does not change soon, we will be subjecting the next generation to a life of turmoil.
Rant over.
As a practicing NHS doctor for just over 5 years, I think I can fairly say that the outlook for the NHS is looking fairly grim (you know, just to state the completely obvious). I came to this country a timid F2 level doctor, having just completed a 1 year internship in Dubai, and found myself having to quickly adjust to the so called ‘adult’ life (bills, HMRC, tax, HMRC, exams, HMRC, budgeting, HMRC, national insurance, GP, HMRC, find a job, relocate, tell HMRC - you get the picture). I adored my work as a doctor (with all its' trials and tribulations), and I also had the advantage of being a Sudanese doctor with a mostly British background - both my parents were doctors and moved to England just before I was born to escape the Civil war in the Gulf (1980s - 1990s). They spent their early days locuming but gradually worked their way up to consultant posts in gastroenterology and paediatrics. I think my dad had been a practicing consultant for only a few years but before I knew it, we had suddenly packed up and left our house in Liverpool to permanently reside in Sudan.
As you can imagine, I did not take this move very well. I had no idea why it had been necessary. Both my parents had good jobs, they were able to support both two daughters and also various members of the extended family back in Sudan. But pose this question to my dad at the time, and ask if he would ever go back, and you’d be met with a frown and a grunt of disapproval. ‘England? Pffff... never’.
I have only now, almost 18 years later, begun to understand why my dad rejects every job opportunity that comes his way (from the NHS). Today he told me he has been hounded almost weekly by calls from random British numbers, offering very high rates for locum work in the UK. He’s not sure he wants to do it, and I find this particularly interesting considering the fact that when he did work as a doctor here, the NHS was in much better shape than it is today. He is aware, through watching the news, that prospects for training as a doctor here are rapidly declining, and spent all of last year pushing me to complete GP training so I could find better work in Canada.
Needless to say neither he nor mum were happy when I told them I had quit the program one year after I’d started it, and was considering something new. I found myself asking; what went wrong?
When I questioned why he persevered and insisted I find another training job, I realised that the answer was something I’d known all along. He knew the struggle of living in a foreign country and all the ins and outs of being employed in the UK. In his eyes, being a doctor was a way to make it easier - he shares the belief of almost every Sudanese parent I know (his generation at least), that the only way they can ensure their children can live a productive, comfortable life is by dedicating their time and efforts towards medicine. We’d better keep our heads down, work hard and thank the Lord because every other field of work will be wrought with hardships and financial instability.
But it is this nostalgia that is the root of a lot of problems facing my generation of Sudanese doctors, and certainly those of other ethnicities as well. I have, on occasion, asked a few different colleagues from work if they would let their children study medicine - only a small percent said they would never (and a large proportion of them where white). Some felt that medicine was too much of a struggle as a career but they could see no other way to guarantee financial independence for their kids. Only one was quite open about the fact that all of his kids were to study medicine, and if not, dentistry or other related fields.
I feel that this is something that requires a massive change of an almost sacred practice for some families. There are a few doctors in younger generations who are more aware now that medicine is not what it used to be. They know that most health care professionals live a life of stress, anxiety and a never ending cycle of oncalls and missed weekends. I will not even begin to talk about the impact of some of the decisions our government has made with the NHS in the last 5 or 6 years, or the funding issues and capped salaries, or the way the population of NHS doctors has been dropping like flies - that is a conversation for another day. I can only hope this awareness is something that I see continue to grow, because if something does not change soon, we will be subjecting the next generation to a life of turmoil.
Rant over.
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