Nigerian Doctor passed PLAB1 and PLAB 2 and Resigned His Job for UK Job Stranded as Visa got Rejected

Doctors who are being blocked from taking up job offers in the NHS have begun venting their anger against the Home Office cap on visas that is preventing them coming to the UK. One recruitment company alone, BDI Resourcing, is aware of 54 doctors who are stuck in limbo after quitting their jobs, accepting offers at hospitals but then having their certificates of sponsorship (CoS) – the document necessary to secure a Tier 2 (General) workers’ visa – rejected as there are none available.

Trusts must apply for certificates on their employees’ behalf. Yet NHS hospitals desperate to fill rota gaps are becoming exasperated as visa quotas for non-EU immigrants set seven years ago are already full, i revealed this week.

“I resigned from my job because you need a month prior notice and my wife, a nurse, resigned too. Now I am being told to wait until April. I am devastated.”

Nigerian doctor Although “priority doctors”, such as emergency medics and paediatricians, are getting through, junior doctors working in areas such as elderly care, a huge pressure point at this time of year, as well as surgeons, are being affected. One such doctor was given a job offer on 3 November after passing his two-part Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) exam, which overseas medics must take in order to join the General Medical Council (GMC) and be registered to practice in the UK. The second part has to be taken at the GMC assessment centre in Manchester so candidates spend thousands on travel to be there.

“Having passed my PLAB exams and while processing my GMC registration, I applied for the Rotational clinical fellow post at an NHS trust,” they said.

“I was told by the hospital that my CoS was being applied for. For unknown reasons, having qualified to practice in the UK, after all the stress of writing exams, spending lots of money to travel down from my home country, and going through rigorous processes to get registered, it’s so frustrating to be denied of this certificate in December and now January as well.

“It’s really depressing and I have no idea of what or how to go. Should I go for a shortage occupation [given priority when it comes to applying for a Tier 2 visa]? Is this a ploy to stop foreigners from entering the UK NHS? These and many more questions I ponder on.”

‘My dream’ A Nigerian doctor, who also did not want to be identified for fear of not getting their visa, said: “I have always wanted to work in the UK, mainly because almost all of the text books I used in medical school were from the UK. “I have always had this notion that the UK is the best place to develop my knowledge and skills. So after graduating medical school in 2014 and with two years clinical experience in Nigeria, although I could barely afford to feed myself, I set out on a mission to be registered by the almighty GMC – the gateway to the medical profession in the UK.

“I spent all I had and even borrowed from friends to clear IELTS [English language exam] and PLAB1. Knowing that traveling to the UK for PLAB 2 would cost a fortune, that didn’t deter me. I took a six-month loan from the bank because I was hell bent to travel to the UK. After all the hustle and sleepless nights, I passed PLAB2 in October 2017.

“I was already back in Nigeria and I started giving interviews and was so happy that my dream had finally materialized. My wife and family were so excited for me, I signed a contract for a job in the NHS in November expecting to get my CoS in December. This was rejected and posted to January.

I resigned from my job because you need a month prior notice and my wife, a nurse, resigned too. Now this January I am being told to wait until April. I am devastated beyond description.

“Both of us have no job, we cannot be re-employed easily as there are no short term locums here, our bank accounts are about to expire, our families are expecting us to leave and we have to sit at home all day bored to death. It is quite depressing not knowing how to feed my family. I gave my all to this and now my efforts are being disgraced by a redline from the home office. I expect the GMC and NHS for whom we have worked so hard and paid heavily to join, should sit up bring this humiliation to a stop.”

Huge backlog

Daniel Platts, director and general medicine specialist at BDI Resourcing, told i: “We are now aware of 54 doctors who are impacted by rejections of certificates of sponsorship – 23 of these have now had their applications rejected in December and January whilst the remaining 31 have been rejected just this month.

“Since the annual allocation will not refresh until the end of March it seems reasonable to assume that by this time the NHS will have more than 100 vacant gaps that could (and should) be filled by these fully qualified and willing doctors. There could also be a huge backlog of applicants at this point, prolonging the problem in to the next annual allocation. “Perhaps more concerning, is that many of these doctors are now reassessing their whole plans to relocate to the UK, particularly as many face months of uncertainty whilst being out of work unless they sign contract extensions in their home countries. The knock on effect in the community for international doctors is incredibly worrying since many are having second thoughts about studying for and sitting the exams necessary to work in the UK as they feel incredibly unwanted here. “

The UK relies on a steady stream of international doctors who come to serve one of the best healthcare systems in the world and the long term effects could be vast if these doctors stop applying.” Daniel Platts, Director, BDI Resourcing

“The UK relies on a steady stream of international doctors who come to serve one of the best healthcare systems in the world and the long term effects could be vast if these doctors stop applying.” All the posts the non-EU doctors have applied for have all been advertised to UK and EU applicants for more than 28 days with no successful applications.

Mr Platts said: “It is fair to say that each and every unfilled post for a doctor at this critical time is in shortage. This is particularly true when considering those patients that are going untreated whilst doctors are being blocked from helping.

“While we acknowledge that the Home Office is prioritising those in A&E, Paediatrics and Radiology as ‘Shortage Occupations’, we are calling for them to temporarily add all doctor posts to the shortage list to ensure that the NHS is well staffed over the winter months and at a critical time for hospitals across the UK. This has been done before for nurses and must be reciprocated for doctors.

“There are over 6,000 unfilled vacancies for doctors across the UK and, whilst the home office are acting to protect the jobs of British workers, there simply aren’t 6,000 doctors sat out of work worrying about foreign labour taking their jobs. In fact, most would tell you that they are working incredibly hard and would welcome any expansions in the workforce, from the UK or otherwise.”