The Medical Training Review is conducting an extensive programme of engagement and listening to ensure that doctors, educators, patients and NHS leaders have the opportunity to shape medical training in England for the future. This activity forms the ‘diagnostic’ phase 1 of the review, which will report in summer 2025. These outputs will inform reform options, to be developed in phase 2.
This call for evidence will run for 6 weeks, from Tuesday 8 April to 23:59 on Tuesday 20 May. Responses will form part of the review’s evidence base, alongside the outputs of listening events and targeted focus groups with stakeholders, including patients and patient advocacy groups.
While the call for evidence is open to the public, the questions are tailored towards those with experience of undertaking and/or delivering postgraduate medical education or delivering clinical services. This exercise will therefore be supplemented by engagement, such as the focus groups, to widen opportunities for other groups, such as patients to respond to the review and capture a breadth and plurality of perspectives.
The questions have been informed by listening events to date, the academic literature and a desktop review into the current challenges facing postgraduate medical training and options for addressing these.
Questions 4 to 14 are grouped to explore 3 themes :
- whether postgraduate medical training meets the needs and expectations of patients, healthcare services and postgraduate doctors
- training delivery, capacity and quality
- how postgraduate medical education could be reformed to deliver the 3 strategic shifts for the NHS
NHSE provide a brief summary of the evidence and feedback the review has received so far for each subtheme within the 3 themes above. Respondents are asked to rate their agreement with a statement for each subtheme, explain their response and share any supporting evidence that will further understanding of the current issues within postgraduate medical education.
The final questions (15 – 17) are aimed specifically at medical students, postgraduate doctors (residents, locally employed doctors and specialist and associate specialist doctors), consultants and GPs, and medical educators. They focus on the factors that contribute to a rewarding and satisfying postgraduate training experience, the current barriers to this experience and the interventions that can be prioritised to address the issues.
All questions are optional. Supporting evidence can be submitted via this survey link or by emailing to england.medicaltrainingreview@nhs.net. To note, they are seeking evidence-based submissions that demonstrate effective practice and they cannot accept promotional material, non evidence-based assertions of effectiveness, opinion pieces or editorial reviews.
The data collected will be used to inform the ‘diagnostic’ phase 1 of the Postgraduate Medical Training Review and the findings will be included in the phase 1 report, scheduled for publication in summer 2025.
Click here to see the first issue of the Medical Training Review newsletter.
Please cascade to your networks and encourage all your frontline colleagues to respond.
