The BMA has apologised for any “upset and distress” caused by the announcement that its Resident Doctors Committee planned to lobby for UK graduates to be prioritised when applying for specialty training posts.
In an email to members earlier this month the committee said that it had passed a resolution “to prioritise lobbying for a method of UK graduate prioritisation for specialty training applications and on the issue of training bottlenecks during this session.”
The committee bemoaned the high competition ratios for specialty training. “This is not the future we were promised when we began our medical training, and urgent action needs to be taken,” said the email. “We want to see a policy solution that ensures UK graduates are not fighting year on year for a stagnant number of specialty training places. It’s also our priority that international medical graduate colleagues who work in the UK are protected from exploitation and we will continue to push for this.”
However, BMA chief officers subsequently released a clarifying statement saying that the association’s longstanding policy “maintains that all doctors currently practising in the UK, regardless of nationality or place of primary medical qualification, should have access to training opportunities, prior to recruitment from abroad.”1
They said that they wanted “to reassure IMG [international medical graduate] members and …
