Safeguarding current and future patient care requires us to become more intelligent about how physician training is reconciled with the service demands of modern NHS trusts. The importance of preserving training opportunities requires full recognition, as does the necessity of an adequate and readily available training budget, to allow trainees to gain the clinical skills they need.
A shortened training period, increasing clinical service commitments for both trainees and trainers, and changes to ways of working, have led to growing concern that the training available to junior doctors has declined in quality and quantity.
A strategy is urgently required to ensure that trainees and trainers are able to recognise and benefit fully from each potential learning event. Equally, training must be recognised as essential at all levels of NHS management, with responsibility for its quality integrated into existing regulatory systems.
