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Just to add, while it is an island nation, it's not remote. It's also quite wealthy, but with a relatively small and elderly population. While I'm not a doctor, I'd imagine that if I was a good doctor, I'd rather work somewhere that I'm likely to get exposure to interesting cases, or hospital known for producing quality research, or a teaching hospital, or at least want to live somewhere that I could go to conferences and otherwise work with other smart people. Indeed, I moved to London for similar reasons in my career. The way the local hospital tries to maintain some level of competence is by flying doctors over for a day or two a week, but even with that it's an uphill battle trying to attract anyone in the prime of their career. It's more of a place you go for an easy retirement, earning relatively good money but for boring work in poor facilities. Even then, the money isn't comparable to what a late stage career doctor could get working privately in Harley Street for example. We do know a few doctors (and nurses) working over there, and even if they start out enthusiastic, the system ultimately grinds them down until they're apathetic. Some leave, some just give into it. I appreciate that you obviously can't have excellent doctors everywhere, but at the same time, I bet most individuals' interactions with healthcare are those local community hospitals and pre-retirement GPs with little enthusiasm for the job. I suppose that in healthcare, reaching the best physicians is usually a bad sign regarding your prognosis (or a very good sign regarding your bank balance). |
Community hospitals can have very complex care and top talent, but not in cities with a singular hospital and island population.
Irrespective of geographic proximity, by your description this location appears to be a medical desert/medically remote. Most doctors, especially modern ones, don’t like practicing in places without a lot of other physicians for backup/support and somewhat easy access to subspecialists for referrals. Fortunately most hospitals and practice settings provide this (i.e. rural Wisconsin was UW-Madison for backup which is generally not that difficult for patient transport and is an excellent medical centre).
The issue here is not just local community hospital providing poor care. You’re taking about a very isolated practice that no one wants to work in, this is an outlier.