DOUBLE the proportion of junior doctors leave Scotland to work abroad compared with the rest of the UK.
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow has revealed 16.6 per cent of those who graduate in medicine from Scottish universities have gone overseas within three years.
This compares with 7.6 per cent south of the Border.
College president Dr Frank Dunn is calling on the Scottish Government to consider offering more places to study medicine in Scotland to ensure there are enough doctors to staff the NHS.
He said of the 850 to 900 medical students who graduate each year around 100 are immediately lost because they return to England to pursue their careers.
Another 50 to 100, he said, take time out or follow different career paths. 
When the first “foundation” years of hospital work have been undertaken – some 30 months after graduation – he said official figures show 16.6 per cent of doctors have left the UK.
Dr Dunn put this exodus down to “wonderlust”. He said: “It can be seen as a positive thing in many ways. Scotland has always exported doctors and Scots have always wanted to see the world.”
However, shortages of junior doctors to work in particular fields of medicine are emerging. At the end of this year’s official recruitment cycle, one in five training slots for general practice in Scotland – already said to be facing a staffing crisis – were unfilled. Two-thirds of senior training jobs in emergency medicine were vacant along with more than 70 per cent of senior training positions in acute medicine.
Dr Dunn said Scotland needed to look at retaining more doctors because of these gaps. He said: “We need to do everything we can to retain young doctors in Scotland and emphasise to them the health service in Scotland is a much healthier place than it is in England. They have issues with commissioning and privatisation that make the health service in England in many way less attractive. It is puzzling that despite that, we are not retaining them.”
He also said there should be discussions about offering more places to train in medicine in Scotland to address the problem.
He said: “I wonder if we should have this conversation about increasing the undergraduates in Scottish medical schools. I am not suggesting they should be purely Scottish, but if we had another 200 a year, then many of them – for geographical reasons – will stay in Scotland.”
Earlier this week he told a Health Summit organised by The Herald and the Scottish Government to discuss the future of the NHS that there were talented people in Scotland who were unable to get into medical schools.
Professor Andrew Collier, a member of the council of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, backed the call to consider training more medical students.
He said about a third of medical graduates from Scottish universities were not Scottish, instead coming from overseas or other parts of the UK. There was an expectation these doctors would leave, he said, while other Scottish doctors wanted to travel. 

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “Junior doctors are our future medical leaders and we are committed to making Scotland as attractive a place as possible for them to work.
“In February this year we stopped junior doctors working seven full shift nights in a row, and by February 2016 no junior doctor will work for any more than seven days in a row in any shift pattern. We are the only country in the UK to take such action. Furthermore all junior doctor rotas in Scotland comply fully with the Working Time Regulations, which includes an average working week of 48 hours or less.
“We are working in partnership with the sector when it comes to the terms and conditions for junior doctors and have confirmed that we are not seeking to impose any new contractual arrangements in Scotland and would look to secure any agreement through principled negotiations – a decision welcomed by the BMA. We are also looking closely at what more can be done. 
“Under this government there are record numbers of doctors employed in NHS Scotland and since 2006 we have seen a 23.6 per cent increase in the numbers of medical staff from 9,600 to 11,868. We will consider future medical student numbers in due course.”