The RCP welcomes the Health Committee’s Education, training and workforce planning report. RCP president Sir Richard Thompson, responding to the report, said;
The RCP agrees that postgraduate deans need to be integrated into the new education and training system as soon as possible to prevent uncertainty. We must also improve national workforce planning, so as to have not just enough doctors to treat the growing numbers of acute medical patients, but the right doctors in the right places to ensure high standards of care for patients everywhere.
On the role of deaneries, Sir Richard Thompson, president of the RCP said:
The RCP agrees that integration of the postgraduate deaneries into the new system will be critical to its success. Deans must be able to provide independent quality management of trainees. Therefore, they must be professionally accountable to a national director of quality and education, embedded in the highest decision making structures in Health Education England. Royal colleges can help facilitate quality management locally by working closely with the regulators, deans and local education and training boards (LETBs).
Onworkforce planning, Dr Andrew Goddard, director of the RCP’s medical workforce unit said:
The RCP agrees with the Committee that effective workforce planning depends on up-to-date and high quality data. The RCP’s Medical Workforce Unit conducts the most comprehensive audit of the medical consultant and registrar workforce. We can help the Centre for Workforce Intelligence improve the data available to them, which will help performance manage the new education and training system.
The RCP is also pleased that the Health Committee recognises the role of overseas doctors in the NHS. We successfully campaigned for the Medical Training Initiative (which enables doctors to come to the UK for fixed periods of training) to remain a two year programme and not be halved to one year. We believe this is a valuable scheme that enriches the NHS and helps to improve health systems across the globe.
However,the RCP was disappointed that the Committee did not recognise the difficulties caused by limitation of the hours for training doctors particularly in acute medicine caused by EWTD and New Deal. The RCP is calling for greater flexibility in application of these policies.
The RCP also welcomes the call for greater flexibility in medical careers. Patients, particularly older people, are admitted to hospital with increasingly complex conditions and need the right balance of generalists and specialists to meet their needs – a more flexible career framework would support this.
Finally, the Health Committee has identified many areas where the government must provide greater clarity. We believe the Committee is well placed to conduct a follow-up inquiry to address the areas, namely how:
- the postgraduate dean will operate in the new system, and in particular how LETBs will be governed
- how the secretary of state will hold the education and training system to account
- how Health Education England will work with other key stakeholders
- how a ‘workable’ tariff and levy system that the government has proposed to pay for the new system will operate and
- how the funding for education and training can be protected from ‘raiding’ by SHAs for service provision, particularly with a tight financial climate across the NHS.
The RCP wishes to work with the Committee, government and other key stakeholders to develop thinking in these areas.
Looking to the future, the RCP has established the groundbreaking Future Hospital Commission, to examine the organisation, processes and standards of care in hospital. We hope to identify the best way to treat medical inpatients in the future. We will be sharing interim findings from the commission in the autumn.
For further information, please contact Lisa Cunningham, Public Affairs Manager, on +44 (0)20 3075 1468 / 07990 745610, or email Lisa.cunningham@rcplondon.ac.uk