The chairman of the NHS has hinted that training for doctors could be shortened as part of a national plan to tackle NHS shortages.
According to The Telegraph:
An NHS workforce strategy is expected to set out plans for thousands of medical and nursing apprentices, as well as medical assistants, taking on tasks normally done by doctors.
The 15-year-plan, expected within weeks, comes amid record shortages of NHS staff, with more than 130,000 vacancies across England.
Richard Meddings, chairman of NHS England, said a radical overhaul was needed to plug gaps, suggesting too many doctors receive more training than they actually need.
Many tasks now being done by medics could be fulfilled by an expansion of more junior roles such as “physician’s associates,” he suggested.
At a Social Market Foundation event, Mr Meddings was asked if it should be possible to train a doctor in less than the seven years it currently takes.
“I would have thought so,” he said, continuing: “Or you go to physician associates – so you change the skill levels.”
“At the moment we train [doctors] to full skills and the way we work in the system most of the doctors don’t get to work to their full skills. So actually there is a need to change that,” said the former banker, who took up post at NHS England a year ago.
While the standard medical degree in the UK is five years, it is followed by two foundation years’ of training.
There are currently around 3,500 physician associates employed in England, largely in hospitals, with existing plans to train 1,000 more annually.
The job, usually targeted at science graduates, involves two years’ training – rather than the seven years it takes to become a doctor, and clinical placements in hospitals and GP practices.
Health officials are currently consulting on plans to expand their role, giving them prescribing powers. They also want to see far more use of the assistants in GP practices, doing jobs traditionally done by the family doctor.
The first apprentice schemes for NHS doctors are also expected to start later this year, enabling trainees to do more learning on the job, and start earning sooner.
