Education still needs to be improved for trainee doctors

BMJ 1998;316:1907 ( 20 June )

Letters

Education still needs to be improved for trainee doctors

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

EDITOR $---$ Two recent editorials have brought back to the fore the debate about the need for improvements in the training of juniordoctors and why temporal fortitude in terms of years spent workingin service based posts gaining "experience" is not a surrogatefor truly structured training. ¹ ²

It was agreed by all signatories to the heads of agreement in 1990 that all basic and most higher specialist training needscould be fulfilled within duty limits of 72 hours as laid downin the new deal.³ At that time shift systems were introducedto reduce continuous duty periods for juniors working in highintensity specialties, thus protecting patients from overtireddoctors. The BMA's Junior Doctors Committee has long argued thatit is poor organisation of training around reductions in hoursthat has been detrimental, not the reductions in hours themselves.In 1993 the Calman report recommended the introduction of structuredtraining programmes for . . . [Full text of this article]