Should emigrating doctors pay back the NHS?

IT BEGGARS belief that some doctors who haven’t even finished training are thinking of emigrating. Aircrew joining the Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force have their training paid for by taxpayers and have to serve for a certain number of years to repay that cost. The same should be applied to medical staff.

BARRY LAZENBURY, Yate, Glos. Why should emigrating doctors repay the cost of their training? They’re leaving only because of the Government’s incompetence. how can the Government improve weekend NHS patient care to the same level as weekday care without employing more doctors or making doctors work longer? It even says doctors won’t work more than 72 hours a week instead of the current maximum of 91. Nonsense: they will have little social or family life and will be even more tired. If this contract is imposed, more patients will die and doctors will leave.

FRANCIS WILKINS, Croydon, Surrey. THERE are claims that we should recover public money spent on doctors leaving for Australia. The cost of training to this level involves medical school for five or six years, then two years on-the-job training. The cost of five years of medical school is £135,249, and total employment costs for the two years after that range from £51,836 to £76,068. So the cost of training a doctor ranges from £187,085 to £211,317. Of this, the trainee doctor has to contribute £45,000 in tuition fees alone. The true value of a trainee doctor’s work in the latter two years, reflected by the cost to the NHS if there were no trainee doctors, is £104,163. The total net contribution by the public purse would be up to £62,154, an amount potentially surpassed by the doctor’s own tuition fee contribution. Yes, doctors leaving the NHS will cost us, but they will foot a hefty bill.

Dr JONATHAN STURGEON, Paediatrics trainee, St George’s, London.