The British Medical Association’s Junior Doctor Committee has called on the Department of Health to halt its review of training funding, as it threatens to cut millions of pounds from junior doctor training.
The review of the Multi Professional Education and Training Levy, which will decide the future of how NHS training funding is distributed, is currently underway. The review deals with the funding of both undergraduate education and postgraduate training for all healthcare workers. Changes could start to be introduced as early as April 2010.
In a statement, the BMA pointed out that junior doctors’ salaries are paid in part by their employer for the service they provide to the patients and in part by the DH for their time spent training. The review is threatening to reduce the training component of their salary, which will make it more expensive for hospitals to employ junior doctors.
Dr Shree Datta, chair of the BMA’s Junior Doctor Committee said: “Fully trained doctors do not grow on trees and the DH needs to be very careful that they do not end up making the training of doctors so unattractive or the funding system so unstable that hospitals no longer want to do it.
“Training is seen as a soft target, but it is crucial to maintaining high standards of patient care. The review is discussing how billions are being spent on the training of healthcare workers, yet the Department of Health has no idea how to measure the quality of training or what proportion of a junior doctor’s time is spent training.”
