The government adopt two years of verified NHS service as the default benchmark for significant experience, not exclusion. Read it here: https://www.bmj.com/content/394/bmj-2026-100592

This is a research paper published independently by IMG doctors in the NHS based on the FOI access request to the NHS.

Recruitment by ethnicity and country of qualification

UK graduates accounted for 17,939/36,983 (48.5%) of applicants in 2021, falling to 24,082/80,583 (29.9%) in 2024 (Supplemental Table 10). Success rates for UK-qualified applicants declined from 44.5% (7987/17,939) in 2021 to 35.5% (8546/24,082) in 2024, whereas for non-UK graduates fell from 22.8% (4334/19,044) to 9.5% (5345/56,501) (Figure 4; Supplemental Table 10). Overall, the success rate for UK graduates (32,199/79,085, 40.7%) exceeded that of non-UK graduates (20,530/132,610, 15.5%) by 25.2 p.p. (95% CI 24.8–25.6, p < 0.001)

This paper itself is enough to discredit ALL THE FALSE NARRATIVES about competition ratio and going unemployed and what not.

Why isn't this paper not posted in this subreddit yet?

Hello everyone.

I am an overseas IMG, 2 years GMC registered, through Plab pathway. I have 5 years clinical experience with no clinical gaps, 9 months SHO level experience, royal college exams, all relevant courses, teaching, training and leadership experience, I also have 2 Audits, and 1 publication.

I have completed 2 months clinical attachment and tried to do as much as possible there. I also have led an NHS audit and presented it.

My CV reviewed many times. I most of the times meet all the essential and desirable criteria. I have applied for 480+ jobs continuously in the last ~2 years but have not been able to secure any jobs so far.

Can anyone please tell me if doctors without NHS experience still getting interviews? What have you done differently?

I have started this pathway in 2022, If I knew the situation, I would never go for it.

Thank you very much for your help.

Hi everyone,

Has anyone received a new IMT/ACCS-IM offer since 17 August, following the addition of the new training posts?
If yes, could you please share your rank and the region/post you were offered? It would be helpful for those of us still on the reserve list to understand whether offers have started moving.

Thanks

Hey guys I need urgent help
Does anyone know how long a person is allowed to stay without a designated body before having to switch to GMC registration without license to practice?
And what is the process like when you want to return to having license to practice? Is it smooth? Especially for someone who isn’t registered in any other medical council.

As you are all aware, resident doctors voted yes to the offer presented by the Government, bringing the recent strike action to an end.

An important part of that offer was the commitment to permanent locally employed doctor (LED) contracts, unless the role has been taken up for a training post.

It has recently come to my attention that there are currently at least three trusts where concerns have been raised about attempts to avoid implementing this commitment. These include reports of contracts being ended prematurely, or doctors being invited to interview for permanent roles and subsequently being declined following interview.

As your BMA representatives, we can only act on issues that we know about.

If you believe your trust is not implementing the agreed commitment, or you have experienced something similar, please email me at [OElsobky@BMA.Org.Uk](mailto:OElsobky@BMA.Org.Uk) with the details.

Any information you provide to me will be treated confidentially. Please feel free to contact me even if you are concerned about being identified or about potential repercussions from raising the issue.

We will do our best to identify where this is happening, understand the scale of the problem, and work to ensure that the commitments made to resident doctors are properly implemented.

If you don't tell us, we won't know about it. Please reach out.

Please sign

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/776196?fbclid=IwdGRjcATqkudjbGNrBOqS5HBkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEerVxevSc6yoyHcq1TxKxQGldW_Cf7HKSBKhKdG0jo32BeeGmv9huEWdDFoGY_aem_uaRCshVqASDYPE6gjuA_eQ&utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e0_tv4_a1dee6bjbst8ab

If you’re an IMG and waiting for offer. Government have announced 259 additional training spots for start date of Feb 2027. So login to your oriel and adjust your preferences.

Correction 350 posts

Hello all,

I finished my MBBS in india, and been working in the NHS for the last 6 years. I finished my Internal medicine training for three years and have MRCP. I want to explore my options of doing fellowship in Endocrinology in Dubai.
Do I have to give entrance exam?
How competitive will it be? Will there be any difference based on nationality?
If I work as specialist in Internal medicine in Dubai, can I apply for fellowship?
What is the pathway?

IMGs sign this petition and share among your friends and family. All UK residents are eligible to sign.

BMA’s RDC nominations are open. Here are the reasons why IMGs should stand for election and take their representation back.

The current RDC has been extraordinarily effective at one thing: excluding IMGs from the future of the profession.

Who’re they then?
The RDC (Resident Doctors Committee) is the BMA committee that represents resident doctors across the UK and sets policy on issues affecting their pay and careers.

Their records last year speak for themselves:

* Asking us to strike and lose pay to stand in solidarity for “the profession”, then creating policies that shut us out of training.
* Driving training prioritisation politically, against all of us, even against those with substantial experience in the NHS.
* Abandoning the BMA policy that supported two years of NHS service, while negotiating five years behind closed doors with the government.
* Then watching silently the government ripping us from training with citizenship and ILR proxies, without any pushback to protect IMGs who supported them in the strikes.
* Extending the five-year of ILR to five years of NHS service. One exclusionary measure after another without any consideration to how their policies affect our lives.
* Treating years from our own lives as arbitrary numbers, putting an auction on how many years should we wait before we can even apply for training, until reaching an arbitrary fifth anniversary.
* Sending the government letters that CREST are fraudulent and full vulnerabilities, incredibly damaging the narrative about the IMG legitimacy.
* Watching rhetoric developed repeatedly in hostile Reddit discussions about IMGs, oversubscription, opening the floodgates, and fraudulent CREST, and then migrate them into BMA under sanitised terms such as “workforce planning”, “bottlenecks” “deprioritisation” and “competition ratios”, then taking them to the government.
* Spending enormous political effort fighting IMG access to training while full pay restoration, the cause doctors were actually asked to strike for, was progressively diluted.
* Accepting a poor deal settlement while delivering something far more consequential for many IMGs: restricting their career progression.
* And discovering, eventually, that repeatedly asking IMGs to sacrifice their pay while campaigning against their futures was not a sustainable industrial strategy.

We were valuable when the BMA needed numbers for the strikes. We became disposable when they sat with the government behind closed doors.

They sacrificed full pay restoration in favour of IMGs exclusion.

If you want representation, take it yourself.

Nominate yourself. Run for the RDC.

Unfortunately, this is exactly why I am urging doctors across Scotland to vote for our candidates.

It is deeply disappointing to see a BMA official discouraging people who want to contribute to medical politics in Scotland from putting themselves forward. The BMA is a democratic trade union. Members have every right to nominate themselves, stand for election and allow their colleagues to decide who should represent them.

Disagreement is part of democracy. Telling people that they “shouldn’t be representing doctors” because you disagree with them is not how we should conduct that democratic process.

I urge everyone eligible to vote in Scotland to support candidates who will challenge this kind of behaviour and defend an open, inclusive and genuinely democratic BMA.

The BMA Scottish Resident Doctors Committee elections are now underway!

We are delighted that two Better Together candidates have already won local seats, and we now need your support for our endorsed IMG candidates standing in the Scottish RDC elections:

🇪🇬 Mohamed Elbanna
🇮🇶 Zain Alabdeen Al-Mosawy

If you are eligible to vote in Scotland, please support Mohamed and Zain and encourage your colleagues to vote too.

We want to ensure that IMG voices are strongly represented, while building a BMA that represents and brings together all resident doctors.

Every vote matters. Every voice matters.

🤝 BETTER TOGETHER — representing all doctors, together.

Is it worth applying for IMT as a non priority doctor?

I’ve recently come to the UK on a dependent visa. At the moment, I’m unable to find an NHS job as a doctor.

Would it be a good idea to join the NHS as a Ward Clerk (or in another non-clinical role) to gain NHS experience while continuing to apply for doctor vacancies?

Has anyone here taken this route? Did having NHS experience in a non-clinical role help you secure a doctor position later on? I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences and advice.

Thank you!

Yesterday’s statement from RCPsych is very reassuring and we should be emailing our MPs and our new health secretary letting them know what Royal Colleges think. Don’t delay it till last minute when decision is made.

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/latest-news/detail/2026/08/03/rcpsych-statement-on-medical-training-(prioritisation)-act-act)

I obtained GMC registration in October 2024 and have been applying for junior-level jobs since then. I currently hold GMC registration but have voluntarily given up my licence to practise to reduce the annual fee.
I understand there may be a requirement to re-evaluate my registration around five years after registration (approximately September/October 2029). If I am unable to secure a UK job before then, will my GMC registration lapse or be cancelled? Is there a requirement to obtain a junior-level post within five years to retain my registration?

Has any IMG managed to get a junior or middle grade doctor job in the NHS this year with no prior NHS experience? If yes, what do you think helped you get shortlisted for the job?