Planning the United Kingdom's medical workforce

BMJ 1998;317:951 ( 3 October )

Letters

Planning the United Kingdom's medical workforce

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

EDITOR $---$ Planning the medical workforce has recently been the subject of headline news in both the medical and the lay press.^1-3The third report of the Medical Workforce Standing Advisory Committeerecommended increasing the intake of medical schools by about1000 students a year.⁴ The health secretary, Frank Dobson,confirmed plans to phase this increase to help create the "extra"7000 doctors necessary to staff the NHS. I hope that these extradoctors are not solely juniors, otherwise it will only createfurther problems.

There is no contention that more doctors are needed. This need has many reasons, including the reductions in junior doctors'hours, the Calman reforms, the fact that more women are in medicine,and increasingly high expectations on the patient's part.¹We can increase the number of juniors only if we increase thenumber of job opportunities at the other end (general practitionersor consultants).

At present planning . . . [Full text of this article]