Low pay, job insecurity for China’s trainee doctors a turn-off for young talent

Huang Qiaoyuan has just a year to go before she completes her undergraduate medical training in southern China, but she is thinking of quitting the field and going into consulting.Huang, a fifth-year clinical medical student in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, said she was initially drawn to the idea of being a doctor during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the contributions of health workers came to the fore.She also thought it would be a financially secure choice in a country where the career has carried high prestige. “I truly believed that medicine was a skill-based career that would protect me from unemployment,” she said.But the reality of the work has made her reconsider her choice. Huang said that during the 12-month unpaid internship of the final year, the interns rarely performed procedures, instead spending most of their time on mundane administrative tasks. The risk of injury in medical disputes was also a factor, she said, but the main factor was everyday workplace pressures.“The main driver is the squeeze on young and mid-career doctors caused by ‘cost-cutting and efficiency-enhancing’ measures, namely the lack of job opportunities, low pay and heavy workloads,” she said.While medicine still attracts some of the nation’s best and brightest, the shine is coming off the career as general work conditions and competition from other industries encourage students to look elsewhere.