Suchergebnisse

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has benefited from the skills of foreign qualified doctors for many years. International medical graduates (IMGs) – that is, those doctors with primary medical qualifications outside the European Economic Area (EEA) – have come to the UK despite the significant personal and financial costs, alongside the burden of taking the Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board (PLAB) examination. Despite the costs and increasing indications that the UK job market was becoming saturated with the increased indigenous medical school output and expansion of the EEA, doctors still migrate to the UK in their thousands (McGinn, 2005). The government's active international recruitment policy, which continued until very recently despite the significant increase in places in UK medical schools, was partially responsible for this trend. Until last year, once registered to practise in the UK, access to specialty training was facilitated by the permit-free training visa (PFTV) system, which allowed IMGs to work and train simultaneously, without the need for a work permit. This meant that they could compete on an equal footing with UK graduates for training opportunities in the UK. The implementation and potential impact of some of the recent policy changes in the NHS specifically with regard to IMGs is discussed here briefly.

This book presents a timely appraisal of the status of psychiatry and its relationship with society in the second decade of this century. It brings together an international team of specialists who review critical issues such as training, professionalism, regulation, ethics, and economics. Together, it constitutes a far-reaching document that considers the status of psychiatry now, and how it should develop in the coming years.

Background: Psychiatry along with other medical disciplines has been under siege in the UK and the USA for a number of years and for a number of reasons. These have varied from various medical scandals and funding changes to political imperatives and public expectations. Changes in the knowledge base have added yet another dimension to this debate.Material: The subject is explored using historical figures and their writings and an overview of historic views on the psychiatry profession.Discussion: The demise of the psychiatrist as an expert and the profession of psychiatry as an expertise can be related to both real and perceived factors. Unlike, for instance, the language used by cardio-thoracic surgeons, the language used in and for professional communications in pyschiatry has become very similar to that used in lay discourses on psychological and relationship matters in the general population — partly as a result of the Freudian project successfully insinuating itself into 'common knowledge' and partly as the influence of media grows across the globe. This language has been misappropriated by a wide variety of non-experts, who then speak and interpret it as if they are specialists and any challenge from professionals is seen as self-protection and heresy. As psychiatrists, we do not use technology in a persuasive way as other branches of medicine tend to and this takes away a powerful symbolic conveying 'expertise'. Increased consumerism adds yet another dimension to this discourse.Conclusions: The patient is definitely the expert on how their illness affects their life, but it is the psychiatrist who is the expert on the illness rather than simply focusing on disease. It is time for the profession loudly to proclaim itself for what it is and what it can and cannot do.

Aims: This study aims to evaluate the psychological and career-planning impact of the new postgraduate training system Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) on junior doctor applicants in the UK. We hypothesized that certain junior doctor groups were more vulnerable to distress during the process than others. Method: Online, anonymous, cross-sectional attitudes survey of applicants in June 2007. Participants were Medical Training Application System (MTAS) applicants of all grades in the UK. Results: Of 1,002 responders, 703 (70%) reported four or more depressive symptoms; 231 (23%) reported increased suicidal thinking; 932 (93%) increased stress; 856 (85%) increased worry; 374 (37%) consumed more alcohol. Some 941 (94%) attributed increased stress to `MMC/MTAS'. Female sex (OR = 1.48, 95% CI = 1.12, 1.95) and not receiving a job offer (OR = 1.85, 95% CI = 1.35, 2.56) predicted higher number of depressive symptoms. Conclusion: At the onset of MMC, MTAS applicants reported negative process experiences, psychological distress and poor coping (including increased alcohol use), with possible implications for mental health, career planning and patient care.

<p class="p1">In the present paper SiN thin film has been studied as a passivation layer and its effect on AlGaN/GaN HEMTs is investigated using two different deposition techniques i.e PECVD and ICPCVD. AlGaN/GaN HEMTs devices passivated with optimised SiN film have delivered lower gate leakage current (from μA to nA). Device source drain saturation current (I<span class="s2">ds</span>) increased from 400mA/mm to ~550 A/mm and the peak extrinsic trans-conductance increased from 100 mS/mm to 170 mS/mm for a 0.8 μm HEMT device. The optimised SiN passivation process has resulted in reduced current collapse and increased breakdown voltage for HEMT devices.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>