Almost 900 new medical specialty training posts have been created, including 273 in psychiatry, Health Education England has announced today.
The total of 876 posts, which start from August, also includes 270 in cancer-related specialties and will provide an increased supply of doctors when demand is higher than ever.
Last year, 11,207 doctors accepted training programmes starting from August this year.
This includes more than 4,000 new trainees this year accepting placements to become a GP.
Professor Wendy Reid, HEE director of education and quality and executive medical director, said: ‘The announcement of additional training posts is excellent news. Training more doctors is positive for patients and demonstrates our commitment to building a sustainable workforce at a crucial time for the NHS.
‘It follows a year where we have continued to hit recruitment targets and attract more people to pursue a career in the NHS. We have seen that the number of doctors keen to join the NHS continues to rise, so it is important that we are able to reflect this with growth in our specialty training programmes.’
Health minister Will Quince said: ‘I’m focused on growing the workforce and these extra training places will boost the number of specialist consultants in the areas most in need, such as cancer and mental health, levelling up healthcare across England.
‘An additional 900 training posts will ensure we tackle health disparities across the UK which are preventing people from reaching their full potential and, on top of record numbers of doctors, nurses and staff working in the NHS, we are building a stronger, healthier NHS for the long-term to give people the security of knowing that it will be there for them when they need it.’
4,000 new GP trainees this year sounds very good, but by how many is it more than last year and the year before?
and there is a bit of a logic error in the second sentence : The extra training posts created will NOT “provide an increased supply of doctors when demand is higher than ever.”
It will in fact mop up some of the existing doctors into those newly created training posts, leaving less to do other work.
There are currently thousands of vacancies in hospital staffing, including many hundreds of doctor posts vacant, which seriously affects service delivery, training experience quality, and working conditions.
This sort of announcement only raises our hopes and expectations, just to dash them when the implied surplus fails to fill the gaps.
Maybe better to announce the increase in number of medical students graduating this year, or better still the number completing PRHO posts or completing specialty training posts and taking up jobs in the NHS? Or do those figures not look so promissing?
Without huge increases in medical student numbers, the increases in training placements will come from attempts to steal doctors from abroad and increase immigration numbers.
Whole Brexit experience and feral hate of foreigners promoted by current government policy will need to be reversed.
Increase Junior doctor hours to 56 a week to allow more training time for experience and this will ease workforce issues until new medical students filter through.