An investigation by the British Medical Journal has accused UK hospitals of using foreign doctors who are a part of the fellowship schemes as “cheap labour” in which they are paid less than NHS trust employed doctors and are sent home if they become pregnant.
Foreign doctors come into the UK hospitals trust as fellows as part of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ Medical Training Initiative.
READ ALSO: Jonathan visits Tinubu at Aso Villa
They work for two years in the NHS (UK’s public healthcare system) to gain experience and return to their home countries.
Since it began in 2009, there have been 6,986 trainees through the scheme from countries including Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sri Lanka.
In some hospital NHS trusts, fellows receive the same pay and benefits as trust-employed doctors (local doctors), but the British Medical Journal discovered that some hospital trusts like University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) trust, Dudley Group NHS trust, and Walsall NHS trust have a specific agreement with the foreign country’s regulatory bodies for doctors, that fellows can be paid less than and have fewer benefits than trust-employed doctors.
-Advertisement-
Senior fellows who work at UHB as grade 3 registrars are paid £2700-£3600 a month by their home country’s regulatory body, the equivalent of £32,400-£43,200 tax-free a year. They are not guaranteed payment for overtime.
UHB would not confirm its payment to local doctors at the same grade but NHS pay scales show they are paid £55,328 this year as basic gross excluding overtime.
Under the UHB agreement, fellows do not get paid paternity leave. This is after an incident in 2017 when UHB terminated the contract of a fellow who got pregnant.
The doctor described her experience to the British Medical Journal as traumatic. She was sent home when she got pregnant.
We do everything possible to supply quality news and information to all our valuable readers day in, day out and we are committed to keep doing this.
Your kind donation will help our continuous research efforts.
-Want to get the news as it breaks?-
