The Government must expand specialty training places and prioritise access for UK medical graduates to address the NHS understaffing crisis, resident doctors leaders have warned.
The BMA UK resident doctors committee has called for a ‘multi-pronged approach’ to tackling the shortage of training places, which it warns could see up to 20,000 doctors denied access to their chosen specialties this year.
A motion endorsed by members of RDCUK on 4 March condemned the ‘persistent failure of UK and devolved nation governments’ in ensuring that places for specialty training posts had kept pace with the UK’s need for an ever-larger medical workforce.
The scale of demand for training places in 2024 saw 4.7 applications made to every available post, compared with just 1.9 per post in 2019, with competition for access likely to increase again this year.
The committee has said it will now lobby the Government to increase the overall number of training places, and that priority for access to existing posts be given to graduates from UK medical schools.
Equal access
The RDCUK has also called for measures to ensure international medical graduates registered and practising in the UK on or before the 5 March 2025 – who have or are set to complete two years of service in the NHS – have equal access to training places.
RDCUK co-chairs Melissa Ryan (pictured right) and Ross Nieuwoudt warned that deficiencies in the current system had led to a perverse spectacle of doctors being underemployed at a time when the NHS continued to suffer with a staffing crisis and with many patients unable to access a doctor.
They said: ‘The failure to properly plan for the future of the NHS workforce is a political one, and it needs a political solution. Along with restoring doctors’ pay, restoring the ratio of training posts is now an essential priority for any government that cares about the future of the NHS.
‘It is a scandal that desperately needed doctors are finding their careers stymied, unable to progress because the training places are not there for them to do so. Come August this year we could potentially see thousands of unemployed doctors – shockingly that is while patients across the UK are waiting far too long for treatment.
‘In the long term the Government needs to face up to the fact that the country needs more consultants and GPs, and to achieve this we need to create more training places. But while these artificial shortages exist, it is vital we do everything possible to keep UK medical graduates in the system, and the Government cannot let their talents and the money already spent on them go to waste.’