Category: Junior Doctors

The state of medical education and practice in the UK

The workforce report 2022

Source: The King’s Fund Health Management and Policy Alert

This report finds that the number of doctors joining the workforce overall has grown by around 17 per cent over the past five years, but that growth is not consistent. It varies considerably between different groups of doctors, leaving a shortfall in primary care that puts at risk patients’ ability to access GP services. The number of specialty and associate specialty (SAS) and locally employed (LE) doctors on the GMC register has increased at six times the rate of GPs, largely driven by doctors coming from overseas. Current rules actively prevent these doctors from working in areas such as primary care, and the GMC is proposing the government change the Performers List criteria to allow more doctors to work in general practice.

OUP medical handbooks

HEE provides OUP medical and nursing handbooks

Newly qualified and junior doctors can tap into two invaluable resources as they begin their transition during August rotation.

Clinicians can get online access to 130 medical handbooks published by Oxford University Press (OUP) as well as Oxford Handbooks in Nursing and the ‘Emergencies In…’ series along with several key textbooks including the Oxford Textbook of Medicine.

Funded by Health Education England’s national NHS Knowledge and Library Services means the resource is free to the NHS in England and can be accessed 24/7 via the HEE/OUP site using your NHS OpenAthens account.

Please email the library team academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk for help with accessing these resources.

Resource of the Month

BMJ Best Practice

BMJ Best Practice is a fantastic resource to support with clinical decision making. The resource is available online and accessible as a mobile app. Simply login with your Open Athens details to access all materials from treatment options to clinical calculators and patient leaflets. Simply search the condition or symptom you are hoping to treat to find evidence based support.

Please feel free to download and share our poster in your departments across the Trust:

BMJ-Best-PracticeDownload

For any support with your Open Athens account, or to set one up please contact: academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk

Covid 19

Updates

Covid-19: Second wave death rate is doubling fortnightly but is lower and slower than in March | The BMJ

Ongoing support from Government and public vigilance imperative as more regions enter Tier 3 – NHS Confederation

Themed Review: Living with Covid19.
NIHR Evidence; 2020.
(This rapid and dynamic review draws on the lived experience of patients and expert consensus as well as published evidence to better understand the impact of ongoing effects of Covid19 (‘Long Covid’), how health and social care services should respond, and what future research questions might be. 15 October.)

Covid-19: Most trainees have faced disruption to their training, GMC survey shows | The BMJ

(A national survey has found that more than seven in 10 junior doctors have had their training disrupted by the pandemic.)

Workforce flexibility in the NHS: utilising Covid-19 innovations – Kings Fund

(This briefing argues that speed at which workforce innovations and flexibilities have been implemented in the NHS since the outbreak of Covid-19 has been both impressive and encouraging. It explores and makes recommendations on six key areas of change: staff wellbeing; flexibility in staff deployment and roles; cross-organisational working and regulation; technology; making use of new roles; and funding.)

Our Covid Voices – National Voices

(A website, run by National Voices, with collected first-person accounts of living through the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. It is a place to read about what matters to people for health and care, during COVID19 and beyond.)

New agreement for NHS junior doctors

Opportunities to train in the independent sector

A new agreement has been reached between independent healthcare providers and the NHS, allowing staff to train in elective surgery or diagnostic activities. Hundreds of thousands of patients are treated in independent facilities with around half a million NHS procedures each year being delivered by independent hospital. This agreement will allow the opportunity to utilise almost all available independent hospital capacity to ease the pressure off the NHS.

Professor Cliff Shearman, Vice President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England said;

We are delighted our work with NHSE, HEE and the Independent Health Providers Network has led to this agreement. It’s only right that NHS-funded treatment should help train the NHS workforce of the future. Every opportunity should be taken to provide them with access to good quality training opportunities.”

To find out more click here.

Top tips for telephone triage and video consulting

Resources to support your practice

Total triage is important to reduce avoidable footfall in practices and reduce the risk and spread of infection. How to establish a remote total triage model in GP using online consultations available here.

Support for telephone and video consulting, GP’s, dentists, mental heath patients and cancer patients can be accessed here.

British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology

Improving junior doctor medicine prescribing and patient safety: an intervention using personalised, structured, video-enhanced feedback and deliberate practice

This research investigates the effectiveness of an intervention for improving the prescribing and patient safety behaviour of Foundation Year doctors.

For more details click here

To request the full text of this article email us at academic.library@lancashirecare.nhs.uk

The state of medical education and practice in the UK: The workforce report 2019

General Medical Council, October 2019

This report draws on the GMC’s medical register data and findings from a new survey on doctors’ workplace experiences. It sets out recommendations to help inform emerging workforce strategies and people plans across the UK. The data shows that the UK’s medical register continues to grow, with many overseas doctors joining our workforce. However, the GMC states that health services must prioritise strategies to retain UK and non-UK trained doctors, and develop supportive workplace cultures with compassionate leaders.

Click here to view the full report.

Caring for the mental health of the medical workforce

British Medical Association, April 2019
This report provides a summary of findings from a large-scale survey into the mental health of doctors and medical students. The survey, which was open to BMA members and non-members across the UK received over 4,300 responses. Four in ten respondents to our survey reported currently experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety, burnout, stress, emotional distress or a mental health condition that is impacting on their work, training or study.
Click here to view the full report.