As the row over junior doctors’ contracts intensifies, thousands of NHS staff are applying to work abroad. Here three who have moved explain why they went

Sarah Wollaston, chair of the Commons health committee, revealed last month that her daughter, a junior doctor, and eight of her friends had all quit the NHS to find work in Australia. It’s a disturbing trend: but as the dissatisfaction over hours and conditions in the NHS grows, it may be one we have to get used to.

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Australia has long attracted doctors from Britain. Depending on their seniority, doctors can earn up to 50% more in Sydney or Melbourne, despite generally working less overtime. With the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, now threatening to impose a tough new contract on junior doctors – one that would see their working hours increased and pay cut – the lure of Australia is growing.

This should be particularly worrying for the NHS, given that a review published last week found the UK would need 26,500 more doctors and 47,700 nurses to match the OECD average.

The UK provided Australia with 13% of its GPs and 22% of its specialists in 2011. The crisis could see these numbers rise. The latest General Medical Council figures show that in the 10 days after the Hunt contracts were confirmed, doctors made 3,468 requests for a certificate to practise medicine outside of the UK. The regulator normally gets between 20 and 25 requests a day.

Associate professor Brian Owler, who is head of the Australian Medical Association, said junior doctors should be “highly valued” and is critical of the NHS contract changes.

“Junior doctors are almost the engine room of the hospital system,” he said. “They’re the ones that are there every day waiting on patients and sorting out tests, they’re the ones that are still there at night, and without them the whole system grinds to a halt. They’re a bit undervalued sometimes in the services they provide – they’re training as well as working – and people forget how essential they are. Without them, care would suffer.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sarah Wollaston MP’s daughter is one of many young doctors to leave the NHS. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Doctors came to Australia from the UK for a number of reasons, he said, including Australia’s high training standards and beaches-and-sunshine lifestyle.

“And there have also been quite a number of general practitioners and other doctors come to us because they found conditions under the NHS difficult,” he said. “Yes, we have our challenges here, but we know that there have been quite a number of challenges, particularly in general practice, over a number of years in the UK.”

THREE DOCTORS WHO MOVED

Joe Marwood, 31

St Vincent’s hospital, Sydney

“My plan was just to get a year’s worth of experience in a different culture and environment, and it turned out to be too hard to leave,” Joe Marwood said.

He left Britain in August 2012 and works in the emergency department. “There’s an excellent team at St Vincent’s hospital, and I enjoy my work so much. The training programme is great, and the work-life balance is far greater here.”

He spent two years working in British hospitals and said he used to work a significant amount of overtime for no extra pay. “Here, there’s fewer hours worked per week. While the money is better, even before the proposed changes to the NHS, that wasn’t a factor in me coming here. It’s the training, the conditions, the lifestyle. You can get more out of life.”

Marwood said he also felt valued by his employer, a feeling he said his peers back home did not share. “There’s no doubt that if you take a group of highly skilled people who feel completely undervalued by their employer in the UK, they’re going to exercise their right to find more rewarding employment elsewhere,” he said. “Not just financially, but also in terms of finding somewhere psychologically rewarding, and being able to believe that their employer values them.”

Marwood, who studied at the University of Cambridge and University College London, said he could not see himself going back until he was a senior doctor and even then only if overall working conditions under the NHS improved.

Mel Poole, 35

Royal Melbourne hospital

Mel Poole arrived in Australia in August to complete her final year of training as an anaesthetics registrar. She hoped the experience would help her to develop her clinical skills before she becomes a consultant.

“I have to return to the UK for six months because of my training, but then I have to plan whether to come back overseas again, and Australia would be high on the list if I did,” Poole said.

Her basic pay as a senior registrar was almost 30% higher than what it would be in the UK. While Poole says money was not her primary motivation, her employment conditions in Australia allowed her to achieve a healthier work-life balance. “I’m a British doctor, and I always anticipated I would work in the NHS for the majority of my career, even if I went abroad for short periods,” said Poole, who studied at Leicester Medical School. “But it’s pretty depressing, to be honest, to see what junior doctors are going through, and quite demoralising.

“I really believe in the NHS, and the concern of junior doctors is of course for their own positions, but it’s also for the future of the NHS as a whole. Junior doctors also rely on the NHS to provide for us when we are sick, as do our parents, friends and family. Our interests are not selfish.

“It just amazes me that David Cameron and the Conservatives gave promise after promise that the NHS would be safe in their hands, and then they would appoint a health secretary [Jeremy Hunt] who has published a book on privatising the NHS, and who is doing his best to destabilise it.”

A number of Poole’s friends from the UK had also come to Australia after finishing their studies, she said. “They have come across when junior doctors and decided to stay because they felt the lifestyle here was better than at home.”

Danielle Woods, 26

Royal Melbourne hospital

When Danielle Woods (not her real name) moved to Australia to practise emergency medicine in August last year, she thought she would stay only for six months. She came because she had always wanted to travel. Rather than stall her medical training, she decided to embark on a working holiday.

But more than a year later, she has no intention of leaving Melbourne any time soon. “I’m paid more here, I work shorter hours, and those hours are quite protected,” she said. “You find at the end of your rostered day, people make sure you go home on time. In England, there was always pressure to stay on and work longer.”

While studying at Peninsula College of Medicine in Devon, she said many of her fellow students spoke of their desire to go to Australia because of a combination of work and lifestyle. However, Woods said she did feel a loyalty to the NHS, given it was the system that trained her. Her family are also still in England.

“But I think it’s completely outrageous, the disparity in working conditions between here and home,” she said.

“It’s shocking to me, the proposed changes affecting junior doctors. There’s a Facebook group I’m part of, of junior doctors back home, and I’m updated all day every day about the dissatisfaction they are feeling. The idea that junior doctors are being greedy and lacking vocation … it’s very interesting that people can put that spin on it.”

Her training opportunities in Australia, combined with better pay and work-life balance, were the key factors keeping her there. “But I do still believe in the NHS overall, and if the NHS could guarantee the same lifestyle my working conditions in Australia allow me, I would go back,” she said. “Definitely.”