"Education, training leadership and the NHS review" was the topic for debate held at the Royal College of Physicians on workforce, education and training led by Lord Ara Darzi with Professor John Tooke, Professor David Sowden of MMC and Clare Chapman, Director General of the NHS Workforce.
Darzi talked of improvements needing to be made and a framework of accountability, but never touched upon how this would actually be done, while he also ignored calls for ring fencing training budgets. There was also a lot of banter about 'learning agreements' that were seen as some kind of magical fix by some, however how on earth they would force Trusts to take training seriously was not explained adequately.
Sir John Tooke saliently pointed out that there was no one in charge of training, that there was no one to blame if things went wrong. An excellent question was posed by Richard Marks of Remedy UK as regards the workforce planning as regards junior doctor numbers. Do we appoint trainees in a number proportional to the consultant posts that will be available in the future or related to the service needs? Clearly the government wants to flood the market with 'training posts' in order to force down wages by creating a sub-consultant non-training grade, this must be opposed.
Clare Chapman farcically talked of 'openness and honesty', I don't think she intended this as a joke but this is how it came across to me. Given that her malignant Department is behind the dumbing down of training and the deliberate creation of a surplus of demoralised doctors, I doubt her comments would pass a lie detector test. An excellent workforce point was made by Sir John and one Oncology trainee, who both pointed out that demands for particular specialists may change massively over short times; meaning that it would be sensible to ensure that all trainees receive several years of more generalised training before sub specialising, so that they are more prepared to adapt to future workforce needs.
Some superb comments were made about the naivety of educationalists who think that more training content can be easily achieved by fiddling with the bureaucratic elements of training. Darzi was then thoroughly unconvincing when he tried to explain the massive cynicism that the audience felt towards politicians, Darzi claimed that this cynicism was all part of 'democracy', he should have added in the word 'corrupt' before the democracy I feel.
The general dumbing down of undergraduate education was mentioned, as was the massive step backwards that competency based training assessment methods have been. Trainees have gone from being closely monitored by one senior clinician to being grossly unsupervised in their training. The excellent point was also made that doctors are being downgraded in the context of the MDT, doctors in training have to take a lot of the clinical responsibility but are treated with a lack of respect and sometimes disdain by other members of the MDT. If this kind of lack of respect and disdain was shown by doctors to other members of the team, then the doctors would be in great trouble; unfortunately with the current ethos of all Health Care Professionals being equal doctors are being downgraded and routinely bullied to satisfy the government's need to enslave the profession. Clare Chapman was quite pathetic in her comments on this topic.
Overall Darzi appeared all talk, there was a lot of hot air expressed as regards how genuine his role was and how things were so different at the top, with clinicians being engaged. This battle is only just starting, but it was clear from the overall opinion expressed that doctors are not happy with being treated undervalued and bullied by their employers; medical training needs to be completely depoliticised so that patients can be better cared for in the long term. Doctors genuinely want better training because they want to be good at what they do, hence they are fighting the government's desire to dumb down training in order to catalyse the privatisation of the NHS. I'd love to get Darzi on a lie detector.
Darzi talked of improvements needing to be made and a framework of accountability, but never touched upon how this would actually be done, while he also ignored calls for ring fencing training budgets. There was also a lot of banter about 'learning agreements' that were seen as some kind of magical fix by some, however how on earth they would force Trusts to take training seriously was not explained adequately.
Sir John Tooke saliently pointed out that there was no one in charge of training, that there was no one to blame if things went wrong. An excellent question was posed by Richard Marks of Remedy UK as regards the workforce planning as regards junior doctor numbers. Do we appoint trainees in a number proportional to the consultant posts that will be available in the future or related to the service needs? Clearly the government wants to flood the market with 'training posts' in order to force down wages by creating a sub-consultant non-training grade, this must be opposed.
Clare Chapman farcically talked of 'openness and honesty', I don't think she intended this as a joke but this is how it came across to me. Given that her malignant Department is behind the dumbing down of training and the deliberate creation of a surplus of demoralised doctors, I doubt her comments would pass a lie detector test. An excellent workforce point was made by Sir John and one Oncology trainee, who both pointed out that demands for particular specialists may change massively over short times; meaning that it would be sensible to ensure that all trainees receive several years of more generalised training before sub specialising, so that they are more prepared to adapt to future workforce needs.
Some superb comments were made about the naivety of educationalists who think that more training content can be easily achieved by fiddling with the bureaucratic elements of training. Darzi was then thoroughly unconvincing when he tried to explain the massive cynicism that the audience felt towards politicians, Darzi claimed that this cynicism was all part of 'democracy', he should have added in the word 'corrupt' before the democracy I feel.
The general dumbing down of undergraduate education was mentioned, as was the massive step backwards that competency based training assessment methods have been. Trainees have gone from being closely monitored by one senior clinician to being grossly unsupervised in their training. The excellent point was also made that doctors are being downgraded in the context of the MDT, doctors in training have to take a lot of the clinical responsibility but are treated with a lack of respect and sometimes disdain by other members of the MDT. If this kind of lack of respect and disdain was shown by doctors to other members of the team, then the doctors would be in great trouble; unfortunately with the current ethos of all Health Care Professionals being equal doctors are being downgraded and routinely bullied to satisfy the government's need to enslave the profession. Clare Chapman was quite pathetic in her comments on this topic.
Overall Darzi appeared all talk, there was a lot of hot air expressed as regards how genuine his role was and how things were so different at the top, with clinicians being engaged. This battle is only just starting, but it was clear from the overall opinion expressed that doctors are not happy with being treated undervalued and bullied by their employers; medical training needs to be completely depoliticised so that patients can be better cared for in the long term. Doctors genuinely want better training because they want to be good at what they do, hence they are fighting the government's desire to dumb down training in order to catalyse the privatisation of the NHS. I'd love to get Darzi on a lie detector.