Every year the Royal College of Physicians of London, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow conduct a census with the aim of providing robust data on the state of the physician workforce in the UK.
The issues facing the NHS and its workforce remain extremely challenging in the current financial and political climate.
Understanding the experiences of physicians in the UK has never been more important. We are so grateful to all of you that take the time to complete the annual Physicians Census to give us a strong and informed platform from which to influence national policies. Your engagement with this annual census is absolutely critical to enable us to influence and effect meaningful improvement in your working lives and the patient care you deliver.
We are asking more this year about your job plan and education and supervision of other doctors and health care professionals. Trying to understand how much you do and what tends to get squeezed out of your week. For those of you undertaking research we are doing a bit more of a deep dive into this. The interesting findings from last year’s research questions will be published very soon in Clinical Medicine.
We are also asking about discrimination and harassment. We have duplicated the questions from the NHS staff survey in England so we can compare physician responses to other staff groups. There is the opportunity to tell us more about your experiences completely anonymously should you wish to.
Again, this year we have worked with specialties to ask questions specifically about your area. Hopefully this reduces the number of surveys you are asked to complete.
This year we are offering you the chance to win a free place on a selection of courses and events hosted by all three colleges. The lucky recipients will be chosen at random from completed forms at the start of December as an early Christmas present!
If you want to know more about how we use the data, please look at results from the 2022 census here. It includes a summary report of findings, and a data toolkit you can interrogate census data by your specialty, region and provider.
How to complete the 2023 census
The census went live on Wednesday 15 November and you should have received an email invitation which will allow you to access your personalised form. The URL we send is specific to you and should not be passed on to your colleagues.
If you haven’t received your email, or are having difficulties accessing your form, please contact mwucensus@rcp.ac.uk.