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Future of Locum work in Post Brexit NHS

07 Apr 2018 By Views : 1633

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UK Hospital Doctor vis-a-vis NHS post-Brexit
 
The Brexit referendum has deeply divided the populace affecting all stakeholders of United Kindom. This effect has spill onto the Healthcare industry and its impact maneuvers directly towards the National Health Service.
 
Reports
 
A Survey carried out by the British Medical Council warned that 1 in every 5 international doctors is planning to leave the UK attributing to the alleged growing negative attitude towards them after the referendum; besides uncertainty of their conditions and the reference itself. However, only 18% of this started the process to leave the UK.
The protagonists of the referendum raised their opinions predicting that NHS will be greatly affected throughout the course of UK leaving the EU. There have been highlights throughout the media of doctors leaving the UK as result of Brexit referendum.
Meanwhile, the Health Department has denied reports of mass exodus of international doctors from the NHS, instead, they claim that the numbers have increased.
 
Claims and Counterclaims
 
Several arguments and theories elevated as a side effect from the vote on NHS, Hospital placements in particular.
The argument against the move highlights the struggle of losing experienced and many commodity doctors.
The NHS is overshadowed with lack of adequate medical staffs and service, even prompting the NHS Trust Representative Saffron Cordery to state that there is an inverse impact on medical staff recruitment and retention in the NHS after the 23rd June 2016.
According to the supporters, Brexit would repatriate the 350 million euros paid weekly to the EU and this amount can be used for improving the NHS. Many occasions it is argued that this is the main factor for galvanizing the vote last June.
 
But what do the NHS statistics actually say?
 
The House of Commons Library published that there are 81376(74%)  British doctors, 13265 (12%) Asian, 10599 (10%) EU, 3238 African and 345 Australian doctors working in England’s NHS. Besides the composition of England NHS staffs is 87.5 % British, 5.6% EU, and 12.5% of non-British and non-EU nationals on 17 September 2017.
According to the facts, there were 58698 EU staffs in June 2016 and 61974 in September 2017 with an overall change from 5.5 to 5.6% chance since the referendum.
Statistics show that there has been a significant drop from 7.4% to 7.1% of EU Nurses and Health Visitors. The recorded number of doctors all fell from 9.9% in March to 9.6% in September after the referendum.
 
Conclusion
 
Though the number of staffs has significantly increased from 87,000 in 2004 to 113,500 in March 2017, and the hospital consultants from 30650 to 47816, the NHS is facing difficulties to find suitable placements to meet their guidelines of patient safety. There have been several reports of inadequate staffing of medical professionals to meet the demand within the hospitals and closures of wards.  There are occasions in a number of hospitals where some wards were running mainly on junior doctors.
The urgent need to find a solution to sustain the National Health Service and change the tensive situation with the fleeing doctors may best be summed by Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement in the parliament, “I would suggest we can’t wait until next Easter”. 
 
It is clearly a difficult time for NHS and it is going to rely more on temporary staff. The demand for Locum work will significantly increase as well as the cost of hiring locums. NHS frameworks and price caps might have to be reviewed. 
 

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