The review has been welcomed by the BMA which calls the current system for newly qualified doctors “broken”.
A review into postgraduate training for newly qualified doctors is being led by national medical director Stephen Powis and chief medical officer Chris Whitty to address concerns raised by resident doctors.
The review will be based on feedback from current resident doctors and students, locally employed doctors and medical educators, with a series of engagement events around the country starting this month.
The review will cover placement options, the flexibility of training, difficulties with rotas, control and autonomy in training, as well as the balance between developing specialist knowledge and gaining a broad range of skills.
“It’s been several years since medical training was reviewed and the way we practise medicine has evolved, as have the needs and expectations of medical graduates,” said Powis. “By reshaping medical training, our aim is to improve the working lives of resident doctors and support career progression – ultimately helping them to deliver the best possible care to patients,” he added.
A broken system
The news has been welcomed by the British Medical Association (BMA) which called the current system “broken”.
“Patients are struggling to access expert medical care because the UK is under-doctored compared to other OECD countries. There is little benefit in rearranging the deck chairs while a ship is sinking; we need more training places for doctors and an increase in post-training jobs to meet the expectations of patients languishing on waiting lists,” said BMA resident doctors committee co-chairs Melissa Ryan and Ross Nieuwoudt.
They pointed out that a resident doctor is a fully qualified doctor undertaking specialist training to become a consultant or GP and is often the most senior doctor in hospital overnight or on weekends. Despite this, they said, residents are regularly thrown from one side of the country to the other, often plugging gaps in what they called “a broken NHS”.
“We expect the government to hold up its earlier undertaking, made as part of the deal to end the recent pay dispute, to meaningfully review the way resident doctors are forced to rotate around the country during their training, and the negative impact this has on doctors’ physical, mental and social health,” they said.
“First and foremost, the government and NHS England need to immediately address the fact that tens of thousands of doctors are being locked out of training this August. This is an essential part of fixing the NHS as promised by Labour,” they concluded.
