Senior doctors are considering leaving the U.K. for Canada. Here’s why.

The New Brunswick government is crediting retention bonuses for recruiting doctors and nurses.

Senior doctors in the United Kingdom are feeling “increasingly unvalued” and burned out, with some even “quiet quitting” and looking to move to Canada or Australia as a result, according to an article in a medical journal.

Referred to as “consultants,” the senior doctors work in the National Health Service (NHS), the publicly funded health-care system in the U.K. They have full medical training in a specialized area of medicine.

Years of “attacks” on consultants’ pay and a government that just “wasn’t listening” have forced the senior doctors to mull strike action, said Shanu Datta, a consultant psychiatrist from Lancashire, a county in northwestern England, in an article published in The British Medical Journal (BMJ) on June 2.

“On the one hand, we’ve got the demands of clinical work increasing burnout, and on the other hand we’ve got a profession who are feeling increasingly unvalued, almost disrespected,” said Datta, who co-chairs the British Medical Association (BMA) Consultants Committee. The committee acts as a trade union for all consultants in the U.K.

Dispute with government

Despite the British government approving a 3.5 per cent pay increase for doctors in March, the BMA was not satisfied with the hike amid the higher cost of living. The U.K. doctors’ union said it was below the five per cent increase that MPs received. The union also said it wouldn’t be a step towards restoring pay to 2008-09 levels, noting consultants’ pay was currently 25 per cent lower in real terms compared to 2008-09 figures.

Consultants were supposed to get a pay increase of between 8.85 per cent and 18.8 per cent following a previous deal after the 2023-24 strikes, the journal cited the BMA as saying.

Along with restoring their pay, consultants want their standard working hours reduced, the article said, adding that they also want “better recognition and compensation for out-of-hours work.”

In 2024, nearly one in four doctors, or 23 per cent, took a leave of absence from work because of stress, the journal reported, citing General Medical Council data. The figure is up from 12 per cent in 2019.

Are you a doctor considering a move to Canada? What is behind your desire to move here? What challenges do you face while working?

CTVNews.ca wants to hear from you.

Share your story by emailing us at [e-mail] with your name, general location and phone number in case we want to follow up. Your comments may be used in a CTVNews.ca story.