Reviving academic medicine in Britain

We now have a management plan, but who will make it happen?

Education and debate pp 630, 633, 636

Without high quality research there can be no high quality evidence on which to base effective health care. But in Britain the infrastructure which generates that research has long been sick. 1 2 Three papers in this week's journal, a recent meeting, and a new report suggest some treatments. At a symposium on careers in academic medicine organised by the BMA's Joint Consultants Committee and the Department of Health last October, researchers, teachers, trainees, and funding bodies agreed on the problems and sketched out a plan. A report due out in April from the Academy of Medical Sciences should move the plan a step nearer to realisation, by detailing a new career structure for clinician-researchers. The question now is who will make it happen?

Recruitment of doctors to academic posts is at an all time low.2 Especially in surgery, junior academic training positions cannot be filled, and in some specialties senior lectureships, readerships, and even chairs are empty. Bright medical graduates are unwilling …