Have a say on training
By a staff reporter
Doctors are being urged by the GMC to have their say on how the pandemic has affected their workplace learning.
Senior doctors who act as trainers, plus tens of thousands of doctors in training – including in private hospitals – are being asked to take part in the regulator’s National Training Survey (NTS), making it the UK’s largest annual insight into workplace education and training.
Prof Colin Melville, the council’s medical director and director of education and standards, said: ‘The pandemic continues to have a huge impact on all aspects of healthcare. The NTS will help us understand the extent of that impact on training. The responses will influence our work with others to help make sure training recovers as we move on from this extraordinary time.
Prof Colin Melville
‘But to do so effectively, we need to have input from as many doctors as possible: trainers as well as trainees from all parts of the UK and from across different specialties and workplaces. Every voice counts. The more voices we hear from, the more we can do to improve the places where doctors train and to improve the training they receive.’
This year’s NTS is open until 18 May. The 2020 survey was scaled down due to the pandemic, but the last full NTS in 2019 was completed by more than 75,000 doctors, including around 95% of trainees.
Questions, tailored to trainers and trainees, cover areas including:
Workloads and burn-out;
Time available to deliver or receive training;
Access to break rooms and study spaces;
Incivility and rudeness in the workplace;
The pandemic’s impact.
The GMC said responses would provide an unparalleled picture of healthcare training environments across all four UK countries and help ensure trainers and young doctors were properly supported.