Leading jobs in cardiovascular medicine and cardiac surgery in the United Kingdom are increasingly being filled by doctors from Italy, France, and Germany, says an editorial in the European Heart Journal by leading members of the two specialisms.

British doctors are being put off academic jobs by lack of flexibility in training and the rewards of private practice, says the article (European Heart Journal 2004;25:1568-9).

“The pursuit of private practice, which generates enormous incomes among NHS physicians and surgeons, produces role models for junior doctors who aspire to material wealth as opposed to intellectual advance,” say the authors.

They say …