Hospital workforce: fit for the future? looks at the key challenges facing the medical workforce.
Key recommendations
It finds that:
- There is significant geographical variation in the number of consultants per head of the population across the country; there are also variations among specialties.
- There are not enough doctors with the skills to care for frail older patients.
- The workload of the medical registrar is increasingly unmanageable.
Hear about the key findings from the project from the report authors:
- Dr Andrew Goddard, director of medical workforce unit, RCP and consultant gastroenterologist
- Dr Ella Chaudhuri, co-author of Medical registrar: Empowering the unsung heroes of patient care and medical registrar
- Dr Sarah Logan co-author of Medical registrar: Empowering the unsung heroes of patient care and medical registrar
- Dr Nicola Mason co-author of Medical registrar: Empowering the unsung heroes of patient care and medical registrar
The report concludes that there needs to be a rethink of the skills in which doctors are trained, in order to better meet patients’ needs; while the role of the medical registrar and the esteem in which it is held must be reassessed and better valued.
View our series of videos about this report.