So we are short of doctors but

you are not allowed to hire any more?

In an almost suburb south of here there is a medical clinic which is in actual danger of closing although it is clearly needed. It may close because it cannot get doctors. It cannot get doctors because the government is restricting the employment of them.

It is a ridiculous situation. Young, inexperienced GPs have, rightly, to work alongside more experienced staff for a period of time. Yes, things have changed. Being a GP now takes the same length of time as the training for any speciality. Medicine has changed. 

It may have changed for the better in many ways. I am not that sort of doctor. I don't know. I do know that we need doctors and I am grateful they have access to an enormous range of information from other sources. Young doctors come in with new knowledge but they do not have experience. They need it and the government has recognised that. 

So the government has restricted where they can work to begin with but they have also restricted the number of fully qualified doctors who can work elsewhere. Hiring experienced doctors from abroad is also not something you can do if you are not in a designated area. The problem is that populations and areas change and some of those designated areas have not changed for a long time. 

If I pedal half a kilometre to the main road going one way I could go to four medical clinics spread out over a kilometre to a main road going another way. Cross over the road and I can go to at least another three. I can go in another direction and find more. If I went to the almost suburb in the south it would be a very different story. I say "almost suburb" because there is still a gap between the present suburbs and the area in question. When I was a mere kitten this area was "country". This was farming land and the population was much smaller. That has changed - but the designation of the area has not. The Minister in question could change the designation but has not.

 Now we are being told that there is some sort of "review" going on. Someone will be paid to be doing that "review". I suggest all it would take would be to look at some statistics available from sources that even a school student could find. They would soon find the area needs more resources.

The question then is whether we should poach more doctors from abroad. I suspect we would find doctors are needed in other places as well and we should not be poaching them. 

The answer is not simple but actually preventing more being hired because an area is designated as one thing rather than another seems rather foolish to me.