BMJ 1998;316:1846-1847 ( 20 June )

Editorials

Planning the United Kingdom's medical workforce

On present assumptions UK medical school intake needs to increase 

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Without an appropriate workforce, health service delivery will fail. The function of medical workforce planning is to ensure, so far as possible, that the right numbers of doctors, in the right specialties and grades, are in the right places. Traditionally national policy in the United Kingdom has been to provide an adequate supply of doctors while avoiding overproduction and unemployment. The policy has also been to train enough doctors for self sufficiency without reliance on net immigration. The main mechanisms for achieving these policies have been through fixing quotas for the number of places in medical schools and through a variety of mechanisms to control the number of NHS medical posts in each grade, specialty, and location.

Several factors tend to increase the demand for health care and for doctors. Population size and structure, notably its ageing, is reasonably straightforward to estimate. Advances in medical knowledge and technology are less . . . [Full text of this article]
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Planning the United Kingdom's medical workforce
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This article has been cited by other articles:

  • GOLDACRE, M. J., TURNER, G., FAZEL, S., LAMBERT, T. (2005). Career choices for psychiatry: national surveys of graduates of 1974-2000 from UK medical schools. Br. J. Psychiatry 186: 158-164 [Abstract] [Full text]  
  • Doyal, L., Cameron, A. (2000). Reshaping the NHS workforce. BMJ 320: 1023-1024 [Full text]  
  • Pickersgill, A (1998). Planning the United Kingdom's medical workforce. BMJ 317: 951a-951 [Full text]  

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Increase in Med School intake
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bmj.com, 22 Jun 1998 [Full text]
Planning the United Kingdom's medical work force
A Pickersgill
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