Chairman warns of threats to academic medicine

“Unless there is a dramatic change in the way we recruit and retain people there will be no future for academic medicine,” Dr Colin Smith warned the BMA's medical academic staffs conference last week.

Dr Smith, a senior lecturer in medicine at the University of Southampton, and chairman of the Medical Academic Staff Committee (MASC), reported that five chairs in general surgery and seven chairs in ear, nose, and throat surgery and in orthopaedics were empty. The number of staff funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England was down and the number in training posts was at the lowest for a long time. “ How are we to recruit to academic practice when the NHS is so much more secure and what is the role for academic surgery if we cannot recruit young people to it?” he asked.

Not surprisingly, the first two motions picked up this theme, demanding that the BMA took urgent action to draw attention to the increasingly apparent threats to academic medicine and calling on the BMA to take a lead in developing careers advice for medical students and new doctors.