Getting the voice of our members heard in the media is a vital part of our work to influence change, represent physicians, shape health policy and advocate for improved patient care. We put the clinical expertise, insight and lived experience of our fellows and members at the centre of national debate, ensuring that physicians’ voices shape public understanding and political decision-making.
Throughout 2025, the RCP’s media work was central to our campaigns and policy priorities – from workforce pressures, specialty training bottlenecks and waiting lists, to obesity, health inequalities, air quality, assisted dying and preparing the NHS for winter pressures.
Our reach and visibility doubled in 2025
Across the full year, the RCP achieved nearly double the volume of media coverage seen in 2024, making 2025 one of the strongest years of media performance in the college’s recent history.
Our overall media reach also doubled year on year.
The RCP featured prominently across the UK’s most influential media, with BBC News Online and Daily Mail Online contributing the most to our overall reach. This was supported by regular coverage in the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, The Times and health trade publications including The British Medical Journal. Consistent regional and devolved nation coverage ensured visibility across all four nations.
Becoming more visible means our voice is being heard
Over the course of 2025:
- Workforce messaging – including training places, competition ratios and waiting lists – appeared in around half of all coverage, making it the RCP’s strongest and most consistently penetrating narrative.
- Obesity became the single most prominent health topic in the second half of the year, with its share of coverage more than doubling.
- Health inequalities secured extensive coverage, particularly through stories on waiting lists and patient safety, reinforcing the RCP’s call for a cross-government strategy to reduce health inequalities.
- Quotes and substantial mentions accounted for 88% of all RCP media exposure, rather than passing reference.
Whether addressing long-term public health challenges or responding to immediate NHS pressures, we ensured that physicians’ perspectives remained central to the national conversation throughout the year.
Media highlights:
2025
At the start the year, we called for a zero-tolerance approach to corridor care. Our statement, alongside our call to publish the data on corridor care as soon as possible and all year round, was covered by the Independent and the Express.
This was swiftly followed by the publication of our RCP membership snapshot survey findings, which revealed that 78% of respondents had delivered care in unsafe, non-clinical settings such as corridors and waiting rooms in the previous month. The story gained widespread coverage across national media, including ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Sky News, Daily Mail, Independent and the Times.
A further snapshot survey of members found that three in five physicians (59%) reported delivering care in a temporary space between June and August 2025, confirming that corridor care is a year-round issue. The findings generated extensive in national and regional coverage in October, including in the Times, Daily Mail, LBC, i Paper, Daily Mirror, Sun, Metro, BMJ, and over 30 radio broadcasts, including an interview with Professor Mumtaz Patel on LBC News.
In February, we turned the spotlight onto escalating competition ratios, which are leading to serious bottlenecks in medical training. Our Resident Doctor Committee co-chairs spoke out about the impact of this uncertainty on their colleagues, their NHS careers and their health and wellbeing in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times.
They reiterated our campaign call for a comprehensive review of medical postgraduate training which was also covered in the BMJ and the Independent, and within days, the UK government had announced the national medical training review – a commitment we welcomed as a first step towards improving the experience of resident doctors.
Towards the end of the year, we coordinated a joint letter to the health secretary signed by over 70 healthcare organisations calling for productive engagement on the 10 Year Workforce Plan. This was covered by the Health Service Journal.
In April, the Guardian and the Independent reported that 89% of respondents to an RCP membership snapshot survey were concerned about the negative impact of health inequalities on their patients. Almost half (46%) of respondents said at least half of their workload involved illnesses linked to social factors.
Media coverage highlighted the RCP’s call for the government to set out how its health mission will address illness caused by health inequalities. In the coverage, Dr John Dean urged government to ‘provide assurances that improving health and tackling health inequalities remains a priority’ and for ‘a cross-government strategy to reduce them and address the social determinants of health’.
Published in April, Prescription for outpatients: reimagining planned specialist care, which set out the RCP’s vision for reform of outpatient care over the next 10 years, was covered by the Telegraph and the BMJ.
Writing in an opinion piece published by the BMJ, RCP clinical lead for outpatients Dr Theresa Barnes highlighted that in 2023–24, there were over 135 million outpatient appointments in England, describing ‘a story of mounting pressure, wasted time and missed opportunities. Patients report letters arriving after appointments have passed, clinics cancelled at short notice and rescheduled months later, and general practitioners unsure whether referrals have been received.’
The month of May saw the RCP speak out on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Our position – that while the RCP is neutral (neither supporting nor opposing a change in the law), there remain deficiencies in the draft legislation that would need addressing to achieve adequate protection of patients and professionals – was covered by the Times, the Independent and Sky News.
This was followed by a Sky News interview in June, in which Dr John Dean, then RCP clinical vice president, spoke to a further joint statement from the RCP and Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Published in June, a brand new RCP report, A breath of fresh air, highlighted the growing evidence that toxic air is linked to an increasing number of diseases and contributes to around 30,000 deaths a year in the UK at a cost of more than £27 billion. It urged the government to treat air pollution as a serious and preventable public health threat.
The Independent, the Guardian, Sky News, LBC, the BMJ, the BBC, and the Mirror all covered the report, quoting RCP fellow and special adviser Professor Sir Stephen Holgate. It was also covered by news outlets in all four nations.
Later in the year, we published findings from a snapshot survey of RCP members, which revealed that 75% of doctors were concerned about climate-related health harms, while only 16% felt that their workplaces were prepared for extreme weather like heatwaves or flooding. This story was picked by the Press Association newswire and subsequently received media coverage in regional publications. We continued our influencing work on the health harms of air pollution, building on the momentum generated by the RCP air quality report by commissioning polling company YouGov to ask the public about their understanding of the links between air quality and health. The YouGov polling received coverage in the Independent and was used in an open letter to Wes Streeting, signed by other royal medical colleges, asking government to fund a public health campaign on air quality.
In July, the RCP published an updated obesity statement, which called for action to tackle obesity by:
- reducing the aggressive marketing and advertising of unhealthy food
- increasing the availability and affordability of healthy food
- funding equitable access to NHS weight management services across the country.
Findings from the latest RCP membership snapshot survey revealed that 80% of respondents said that over the past 5 years the number of patients they see with obesity has increased.
RCP fellow and special adviser on obesity Dr Kath McCullough appeared live on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme where she said weight loss drugs alone aren’t a magic silver bullet. They need to be rolled out alongside wraparound care, access to healthy nutritious food and green spaces, and funding for equitable access to weight management services.
September saw the RCP raise the alarm on increasing competition for resident doctors and call for an urgent expansion of training posts. The Independent, Evening Standard and Daily Mail all covered RCP president Professor Mumtaz Patel’s response to the latest NHS competition ratio data, which she said ‘sends a deeply worrying message to the next generation of doctors... the UK Government has committed to ensuring doctors leaving medical school in the UK can continue their training in the NHS. It must do this in time for the next recruitment round and recognising NHS experience would be a sensible first step.’
November saw the publication of the RCP’s latest Focus on physicians survey, which revealed that 59% of consultants reported vacancies at their own grade, with 83% concerned that rota gaps are having a negative impact on patient care. These findings were published alongside our report – The voice of physicians: RCP emerging themes 2025 – and were featured in the Independent and the Telegraph.
The RCP’s Future Healthcare Journal also received widespread coverage in the Telegraph, LBC and the Independent. Research published in its November issue revealed that the NHS would need to cut its elective waiting list by more than half to achieve the government’s 18-week targets.
Dr Hilary Williams, the RCP’s clinical vice-president, said: ‘The waiting list is more than just a figure – it represents real people that are likely living in pain and discomfort. This study adds to the growing evidence that people in some regions are waiting significantly longer for elective treatment than others. These regional disparities are unjust and risk contributing to wider inequalities.’