Medical recruitment in Wales

Key recommendations

The RCP has identified several key priorities for medical recruitment in Wales:

We need to show vision and national leadership

• Develop an ambitious long-term vision for the NHS in Wales.
• Increase investment in new models of integrated health and social care.
• Develop a national medical workforce and training strategy.
• Show national leadership on the balance between service and training.
• Work with physicians to redesign acute and specialist medical services.
• Ensure that hospitals work within formal, structured alliances to deliver integrated care.
• Establish the role of chief of medicine, supported by a chief registrar.
• Publicly support and promote the patient-centred Future Hospital model of care.
• Increase health spending and invest in clinically led innovation and prevention.

We need to invest in the medical workforce

• Take a strategic approach to workforce planning.
• Ensure that the acute admissions workload is more evenly distributed between all specialties.
• Train a greater proportion of doctors in the skills of general medicine.
• Support physicians working in non-training jobs to develop their careers.
• Invest in data collection to provide a robust evidence base for medical recruitment planning.
• Make staff health and wellbeing a national priority.

We need to support the clinical leaders of the future

• Promote Wales as an excellent place to live and work as a doctor.
• Focus on addressing recruitment and training challenges.
• Increase the number of undergraduate and postgraduate training posts in Wales.
• Develop training pathways specialising in rural and remote healthcare in Wales.
• Increase the number of medical school places offered to Welsh domiciled students.
• Improve the support available to junior doctors in rural areas.
• Invest in clinical leadership and training programmes.
• Appoint chief registrars in every health board to give trainees a voice.

We need to develop a new way of working

• Encourage health boards to implement the RCP Future Hospital workforce model.
• Deliver more specialist medical care in the community.
• Invest in new innovative ways of working across the entire health and social care sector. 
• Lead the way by developing new integrated workforce models in rural communities.
• Develop the role of community physician.
• Address nurse shortages and develop other clinical roles in the NHS workforce.
• Further embed telemedicine into everyday practice.