GPs have been urged to share their views on medical training as part of NHS England’s review of all postgraduate training, including GP programmes.
The commissioner announced earlier this year that England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty and NHSE’s national medical director Sir Stephen Powis will oversee the review, which was prompted by ‘concerns from resident doctors’.
Now it has launched a ‘call for evidence’ which will run for six weeks until 20 May, to form part of the review’s evidence.
This contains questions aimed specifically at GPs, focusing on the factors that contribute to a ‘rewarding and satisfying’ postgraduate training experience, the current barriers to this experience and the interventions that can be prioritised to address the issues.
Other questions include:
- Whether postgraduate medical training meets the needs and expectations of patients, healthcare services and postgraduate doctors
- Training delivery, capacity and quality
- How postgraduate medical education could be reformed to deliver the 3 strategic shifts for the NHS
NHS England said: ‘While the call for evidence is open to the public, the questions are tailored towards those with experience of undertaking and/or delivering postgraduate medical education or delivering clinical services.
‘This exercise will therefore be supplemented by engagement, such as the focus groups, to widen opportunities for other groups, such as patients to respond to the review and capture a breadth and plurality of perspectives.
‘The questions have been informed by listening events to date, the academic literature and a desktop review into the current challenges facing postgraduate medical training and options for addressing these.’
The data collected will be used to inform the ‘diagnostic’ phase of the review and the findings will be included in a report which will be published this summer.
The national review will cover:
- Placement options
- The ‘flexibility’ of training
- ‘Difficulties’ with rotas, control and autonomy in training
- The ‘balance’ between developing specialist knowledge and gaining a broad range of skills.
It was launched after resident doctors, previously known as junior doctors, ‘made it clear that they have concerns and frustrations with their training experience’.
It comes after the BMA warned that around 20,000 doctors are expected to miss out on a training place this year due to the ‘mismatch’ in the number of formal training places and the number of applicants.
Professor Whitty and Sir Stephen expect their review, which is aligned to the Government’s upcoming 10-year health plan, will ‘improve’ the working lives of resident doctors and ‘enhance’ career progression.
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Receptionists face daily harassment because there is insufficient access to any care. So how will we look after all patients, especially elderly and those in deprived areas using preventive medicine as well as interventional medicine? That must mean team based primary care, using all the available skills. GP training should reflect this with more planned leadership, patient triage and personnel management included. New money must make a difference to current poor care and training must reflect necessity ahead-any alternatives?