Analysis: Jobs for junior doctors ‘to be cut’
National Health Service (NHS) managers in London have demanded the budget for trainee doctors be cut and at least 140 posts will go as £20bn of efficiency savings must be found by 2014.
Ministers have pledged to protect the NHS budget from cuts being made to other departments but rising costs, an ageing population and increasing demands on healthcare, means that £20bn must be found from the current budget in order for the health service to cope.
Junior doctor training under threat
The NHS in London is already under financial pressure and a leaked email from the London deanery has revealed that junior doctors’ training is now under threat.
Funding for 140 posts will be withdrawn from April next year and experts have warned it could be ‘devastating’, especially for small hospitals.
Jeremy Levy, head of medical specialties at the London Deanery, said NHS London is asking trusts to cut 35 specialist registrars, the most senior doctors still in training, by 2010/11, alongside 30 posts for doctors with three years’ postgraduate experience.
It was thought that the lessons of the past thirty years had been learned. But these proposals indicate that we are at risk of taking a major retrograde step.
A further 75 posts will disappear between 2012 and 2014.
Cuts ‘deeply worrying’
The cuts are all being made in medical specialties, including cardiology, diabetes and cancer services.
There are around 12,000 training jobs in London and the posts will be deleted as the doctors move on to the next stage of their career.
The email said there was a need to reduce the doctors’ training budget “as dictated by the Department of Health”. He added that there was a lack of consultant posts for junior doctors to take up when they complete their training.
Dr Levy added that he was “acutely aware” that NHS trusts depend on trainee doctors to care for patients. Hospitals were only just managing to comply with the European Working Time Directive, which limits junior doctors’ hours, with the current workforce, he added.
Dr Andrew Goddard, director of the Royal College of Physician‘s medical workforce unit, described the plans as “deeply worrying”.
It was thought that the lessons of the past thirty years, which showed the depth of damage done to the health service by knee jerk responses to financial pressure had been learned. But these proposals indicate that we are at risk of taking a major retrograde step,” he said.
Dr Tom Dolphin, chairman of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors’ committee, said: “It’s very short-sighted to make cuts to funding for training, because we are effectively stealing from the NHS of the future. We have to continue to train the workforce for the years yet to come.”
An NHS London spokesman said: “No final decisions have been made in advance of the Comprehensive Spending Review; instead we are sensibly planning ahead.
“The NHS is telling us there will be a significant oversupply of doctors in London in the future if current levels of training are maintained.”
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