By the way ... How to stop doctors fleeing the NHS

LAST week, the Health Secretary announced that doctors who leave the NHS to work abroad or go into private practice within four years of qualifying could be forced to repay some of the Government’s contribution to the cost of medical school.

At first glance, this seems like a sensible idea, given the shortage of doctors due to decades of poor planning and the considerable costs of training.

However, to declare this poorly researched plan at this point in time, when Jeremy Hunt is so unpopular with his workforce and still embroiled in a conflict with the junior doctors, can only be seen as an act of aggression.

Yes, forcing them to stay for four years may ‘recoup’ what’s been spent on training, but it’s not going to encourage them to stay any longer — and that is the key: we need to retain medical staff, not bully them. As any sensible employer knows, the way to keep workers is to foster good staff relations, and that policy has all but been abandoned in the NHS.

The working conditions for doctors who are below consultant grade have deteriorated considerably in recent years, and the best that can be said about how doctors feel is that they are deeply unhappy and feel undervalued and even, in many cases, exploited.

And will such a workplace attract our brightest minds? The Government cannot continue to labour under the delusion that a career in medicine is so desirable that our top students will keep applying for medical school.

The news is out — the NHS is a poor employer: unsympathetic, unsupportive, unlikely to value you. It is an aggressive, disciplinarian and hostile environment in which to work, not a happy path to take. Thanks, Mr Hunt. The Health Secretary has been disingenuous in the way he seeks to show the Government means business in increasing the staffing numbers in the NHS.

He has promised extra training places, which is a good start.

But what he does not point out is that, after graduating from university, it takes at least another five years to train a doctor to the level of a GP — and even longer for consultants in most other specialties.

As 70 per cent of medical undergraduates are women, the numbers of fully trained doctors will be eroded by those on maternity leave and those who choose to work part-time.

And if the Government fails to improve working and training conditions, there will be those who, after four years as juniors, will have had enough of a battering in the NHS and will choose to go and work abroad.