Responding to the General
Medical Council’s report The State of medical education and
practice: workforce report 2023, Dr Sarah Clarke, president
of the Royal College of Physicians, said:
“This latest report from the GMC
confirms what we said in our recent thought leadership
paper, The
shape of medicine: we are
undeniably at a turning point for the NHS and the medical
workforce.
“Most relevant to the RCP is the fact
that rising numbers of doctors are moving away from the
traditional training model. While this is partly to do with
trainees not being able to find the training place they want in
the area they want, we know from our
work with HEE on the F3 phenomenon
that there are many reasons why they
are doing things differently.
“The prolonged period of high pressure
the GMC identifies is one of those reasons. We agree with the GMC
that we should respond to these changes positively and look
forward to greater flexibility in medical training and careers.
The RCP and its partners have a key role to play in making sure
that doctors taking time away from training want to stick with
medicine and still find their way to the specialist
register.
“We are encouraged that the number of
doctors joining the register is double the number leaving,
although recognise that a greater number are working
less-than-full-time than in the past. We have been highlighting
this for years, and was one reason we kept calling for medical
school places to be doubled and for workforce planning to be
calculated on full-time equivalent rather than headcount.
Embracing flexible working and opportunities to work flexibly are
vital to improve workforce wellbeing and the retention of
hardworking staff.
“Our focus now must be to make sure
that current trainees and those joining the register stay in UK
medicine. That is why we said in The shape of medicine
that we need to look at the design and
delivery of training, and are talking to our partner Royal
Colleges of Physicians in Edinburgh and Glasgow about that as a
matter of urgency. There is also much employers can do to improve
their working lives, as we laid out in our
paper on short- and medium-term
solutions.”
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