RCP: Centre for Workforce Intelligence's Recommendations for Medical Specialty Training

Friday, 20 August 2010 12:00 AM

In response to the Centre for Workforce Intelligence's Recommendations for Medical Specialty Training 2011, Dr Andrew Goddard, director of the Medical Workforce Unit at the Royal College of Physicians said:

'The RCP is in broad agreement with the recommendations made in this, the first, CfWI report on recommendations for specialty training. Given the short timescale CfWI has had to gather the data and the clear acceptance of the limitations of this data in the report, it is a big step in the right direction for medical workforce planning in England. In particular it supports the key recommendations made by Sir John Temple in his report on the effects of the European Working Time Directive on medical training in this country.

The CfWI recommendations for maintaining trainee numbers in the medical specialties will help the development of consultant delivered care which can only be a good thing for patient care. Furthermore the CfWI has taken a very considered view of the skewed distribution of trainees in some parts of the country by using 'weighted capitation'. This imbalance of both trainees and consultants currently has a large adverse affect on patient services. Correction of these imbalances is crucial to providing a fair health service for all.

Our chief concern is that the recommendations made by this report will not be matched by sufficient funding, either by hospital trusts in employing newly trained doctors or by deaneries who fund the training places. Without this financial support, the opportunities these recommendations give the NHS will be lost and patient care will suffer as a result'.

Notes to Editors

. For further information please contact Frank Soodeen, Linda Cuthbertson or Zoe Horwich on 0203 075 1468, 1254 or 1354 respectively.

. The Medical Workforce Unit supports the RCP's work by providing wide ranging information on issues related to human resources and workload. We collect information about numbers and workloads of consultant physicians working in each specialty in the United Kingdom. This enables us to monitor the provision of consultant service and note trends in the consultant physician workforce. Our Annual Consultant Census is published annually (the most recent once was for 2006) and is available online..

For more information on this and the other data sets collected by the MWU, see: www.rcplondon.ac.uk

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