College calls for flexible working plan for doctors

18 Dec 2019

The General Medical Council’s new report, “The state of medical education and practice in the UK 2019” has been published today (18 December 2018). The report highlights changing approaches to work-life balance and career development, which will impact on UK health services’ ability to plan for patient demand. Speaking about the publication, the President of our College, Professor Jackie Taylor said:

“It’s clear that while workforce pressures continue to impact on the wellbeing of clinicians, more and more will choose to reduce their working hours. We need to address this issue urgently by recruiting more doctors into the NHS.

“Notwithstanding  the critical workforce pressures that exist in the health service, we believe that flexible and less than full time working should be a positive choice for our members at all phases of their careers. That’s why we joined with other health bodies earlier this year to call for increased flexibility in the NHS workplace. This report underlines our argument that we need to have a single planning group for workforce issues within the NHS, so that we can properly monitor this issue and plan for a modern medical workforce which is fit for the future.”

Download the full report

Category: Workforce