Aged 27, he began his IMT in the UK before making the difficult decision to leave for Kingston in Ontario, Canada, in June. It was the current trajectory of the NHS, he said, that enabled him to “look past how competitive it was to get into Canada”.
British doctors are increasingly being lured by foreign governments with the offer of vastly higher pay and better conditions.
Earlier this year, British Columbia in western Canada, splashed huge billboards on the Tube and near University College London Hospital to poach doctors, with the tagline: “Providing care for families should allow you to provide for yours”. Medical posts there pay around double the salary than the equivalent in the NHS.
Some roles dangled in front of British doctors offer far more. One job advert last year targeting fourth-year British graduate doctors promised a salary of A$240,000 (£128,749) at a private hospital on Australia’s Gold Coast. The equivalent baseline pay in Britain is upwards of £40,000.
For Dr Shakeel, it is the working environment that he values most in his new role. In the NHS, he had seen instances where people “couldn’t attend their own wedding because they were put on call, even after giving extensive notice”.
Although leaving Britain meant abandoning the life he had built for himself, now he is “paid better, gets more annual leave”, and his superiors “accommodate his life and recognise that family takes priority”.
In Canada, “I feel very valued here and less stretched,” says Dr Shakeel. “I don’t go into work with 40 patients to see, and you can ask for help because no one is as stretched as they are in the UK. Seeing more patients results in inadequate patient care, whereas in Canada, I can take a holistic angle, I can learn more, and you feel better at the end of the day.
“When you look after a lot of patients, you miss things. Here, you look at every single detail of the patient and there’s much less rush.”
Reports of burnout and poor pay within the medical profession are not limited to doctors. The Royal College of Nursing found last year that the number of nurses planning to leave the UK for better pay and conditions had increased four-fold since 2019.