RCP president Professor Mumtaz Patel and Resident Doctor Committee co-chairs Dr Stephen Joseph and Dr Catherine Rowan met with chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and NHSE medical director Professor Meghana Pandit this week.
Speaking about the future of medical training, they discussed the urgent need to address training bottlenecks and growing competition ratios for IMT places.
With many foundation doctors reporting yesterday that they were unsuccessful in securing an interview for the 2026 recruitment into internal medicine training, Professor Mumtaz Patel said:
‘Too many foundation doctors are struggling to progress in their NHS careers – securing even an interview for a training post in internal medicine is becoming more difficult every year, and many resident doctors are losing hope. The promised increase in medical school places must be matched by an expansion in specialty training posts, alongside urgent action to tackle bottlenecks and bring down competition ratios for resident doctors already in the system.
‘Phase 2 of the medical training review must offer solutions, delivered at pace. The phase 1 report identified the right issues, now we need practical reforms shaped through genuine engagement with doctors on the ground. Our next gen top 10 priorities for medical training set out our recommendations: we need to get the basics right, reform the training recruitment system, make it easier for our residents to progress, improve rota fairness and strengthen educational supervision.’
Dr Seán Coghlan, RCP Student and Foundation Network Doctor chair said:
‘A significant number of outstanding foundation doctors have this week received incredibly disheartening news that they have been unsuccessful in shortlisting for IMT interview. It is unforgivable that UK graduates are unable to progress their career with the NHS. Instead, many of them are deeply concerned about becoming unemployed after years of hard work. The current recruitment process is broken and not fit for purpose with unrealistic expectations and requirements for early career doctors. Urgent reform is required now to ensure that these doctors can continue to progress in postgraduate training.’