Have a look if your hospital is included:

• Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport – £26 million: a new pathology building will protect the testing services doctors rely on to diagnose patients and provide urgent care. 
• Bristol Royal Infirmary, Bristol – £41 million: improvements to operating theatres will make the facilities safer and more reliable for patients needing surgery. 
• Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead – £12 million: redevelopment of maternity facilities will provide a better environment for women receiving care. 
• Wycombe Hospital, Buckinghamshire – £25 million: a new clinical building will allow services to move out of an ageing tower and into modern facilities.  
• Crystal Centre/Linden Centre, Essex – £15 million: 14 new bedrooms will provide additional space for mental health patients and allow existing wards to be improved. 
• Lister Hospital, Hertfordshire – £11 million: a new children’s ward will provide safe, modern space for children needing hospital care. 
• Southend Hospital, Essex – £1 million: planning will begin to replace an ageing hospital tower, helping provide safer facilities for maternity, neonatal, cancer and outpatient care. 
• St George’s Hospital, Stafford – £25 million: improvements to a mental health unit will replace ageing facilities and provide a safer environment for patients. 
• Royal Free Hospital, London – £32 million: two new operating theatres will give patients access to safer, modern facilities for complex operations. 
• John Howard Centre, London – £25 million: refurbishment will create safer, more suitable facilities for people receiving long-term mental health care. 
• Manchester Royal Infirmary – £154k to replace the PET scanner chiller, ensuring reliable temperature control for highly sensitive imaging. 
• Rampton Hospital, Nottinghamshire – £527k to replace air conditioning in a unit, keeping areas cool to maintain a stable environment for patients, staff and visitors. 
• St Peter’s Hospital, Ashford – £791k to restore reliable cooling capacity to support safe operating conditions within theatres.

 

It would be nice if they published the whole list

Now is a great time for the BMA to start a public campaign on educating the public on the differences between a doctor and noctors, similar to the American Medical Association https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/advocacy-action-fighting-scope-creep

u/RDC_officers_2025_26 u/BMABecky

As more patients are admitted to hospital with multiple conditions that don’t fit within one specialty, we need to renew the emphasis on inpatient generalist care.

It is impossible to ignore the impacts of increasing life expectancy and chronic health conditions on the National Health Service. This trend appears to have accelerated following the Covid-19 pandemic, with many hospitals expanding their general internal medicine (GIM) capacity to accommodate increasing numbers of medically complex patients.

Currently, acutely unwell adults are admitted and initially managed by acute medicine consultants, whose remit is largely focused on the first 24 to 72 hours of admission. Patients requiring longer inpatient stays are subsequently transferred to the specialty deemed most appropriate for their primary diagnosis. However, many admissions do not fall neatly within one specialty, so there is considerable variation in how these patients are managed.

Some may remain under acute medicine, some are admitted under specialty teams with GIM commitments, others may be sent to GIM wards or become outlying patients on specialty wards. Although the care provided is often excellent, concerns arise when patients with complex multimorbidity are managed by teams whose primary expertise lies within a narrower specialty. In such circumstances, important aspects of general medical care may receive less attention if they fall outside the team’s usual scope of practice.

The 1993 Calman Report resulted in the creation of the specialist registrar role which enabled an earlier focus on specialty training and a clearer path to completion of training. Prior to this, registrars would spend several years in broad general medicine registrar and unselected medical take rotations.

Over time, however, this shift towards earlier specialty training contributed to a system in which GIM gradually became an additional responsibility attached to specialty training, rather than a distinct professional career pathway.

More complex needs

With increasing multimorbidity, medical complexity, and continuing growth in hospital admissions, both the General Medical Council and Royal College of Physicians have placed renewed emphasis on the importance of generalist skills. The creation of the internal medicine year 3 and internal medicine stage 2 curriculums reflect recognition that future physicians must be equipped to manage increasingly complex patients.

Despite these changes, a significant mismatch remains between the NHS need for generalists and the professional aspirations of many specialty trainees and consultants. Many physicians perceive GIM responsibilities as competing with, rather than complementing, the increasing demands of their own specialty. As a result, inpatient generalist care often remains a secondary responsibility rather than a primary focus.

Several healthcare systems have developed a more explicit professional role for physicians whose primary responsibility is the care of hospitalised patients. Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries have maintained strong traditions in GIM, with many embracing the “hospitalist” model.

The term hospitalist was coined in 1996 by Dr Robert Wachter and Dr Lee Goldman to describe physicians whose primary professional focus is the care of hospitalised patients. Over the last three decades, hospital internal medicine has been the fastest growing specialty in the United States. Its success has been driven by evidence suggesting that dedicated inpatient generalist physicians can improve efficiency, reduce length of stay and enhance patient safety.

Additionally, hospitalists have played an important role in the co-management of surgical patients, contributing to improved perioperative outcomes.

An NHS hospitalist would be a consultant general internist whose principal professional responsibility is the longitudinal inpatient management of complex, multimorbid and diagnostically uncertain adults, from admission through discharge, working alongside rather than replacing organ-based specialists. Hospitalists shouldn’t manage all medical patients, but rather those with multiple active medical problems, diagnostic uncertainty, significant multimorbidity, or no clear specialty ownership.

In 2023 a new general internal medicine higher specialty training pilot programme commenced through the Joint Royal College of Physicians Training Board. Since then, more than 50 resident doctors have enrolled in the training programme. That means there is now a workforce of residents and several newly qualified consultants prepared to take on the “hospitalist” role. These consultants will likely continue to be called general internal medicine consultants, but the role itself may look slightly different. This might include early assessment of diagnostic uncertainty, emphasis on inpatient work rather than outpatient, experts in hospital to community discharge and flow and inpatient safety champions.

With the introduction of this training route, a potential concern is that the development of GIM higher specialty training could inadvertently reduce the general medical skills of physicians training in other specialties. But we should be clear that the development of a dedicated hospitalist workforce should not diminish the expectation that all physicians maintain the skills to be able to recognise and manage medical complexity within their own clinical practice. If anything, greater investment in GIM training should create opportunities for shared education and closer collaboration between GIM physicians and dual-trained specialties.

Integrating expertise

An important conversation moving forward is the overlap between acute medicine and GIM training. The curriculums overlap significantly in content but do maintain a different focus – the former towards early assessment, triage and stabilisation, the latter towards comparatively longer hospital admissions, medical complexity and discharge. But it is still very much the case that many acute medical consultants already provide care for patients beyond 72 hours, and many generalist physicians contribute to acute unselected take.

Rather than viewing acute medicine and GIM as competing disciplines, the NHS should consider how training and consultant job plans can better integrate the two. This could allow generalist physicians to develop expertise across the patient's hospital journey, from initial assessment and stabilisation through to management of complex inpatient illness and discharge.

This would also provide greater flexibility and attractive consultant job plans, allowing some consultants to have predominantly “front-door” roles, whilst others could focus more heavily on ward-based hospitalist practice, and even community facing roles to support “hospital at home” or future community hubs.

Hospital medicine should therefore be understood not simply as another specialty, but as a way of organising inpatient medical care. GIM provides the clinical and training foundation to develop the expertise to implement this model. Moving forward, Integrated Care Boards and NHS hospital leadership should consider how the hospitalist model could be used to meet the needs of an increasingly complex medical inpatient population.

Would be great to see the zero tolerance policy being enforced in the whole country

Yet no mention about the limited infrastructure in NHS. How does this surgeon plan to accommodate more training lists and consultant posts?

Thousands of doctors have urged the BMA to abandon its stance that non-UK medical graduates and others not automatically prioritised should have five years' NHS experience to access specialty training, fearing it disadvantages international medical graduates (IMGs).

Under the Medical Training Prioritisation Act, UK medical graduates and other specific groups have been prioritised for access to specialty training - but IMG doctors can be prioritised if they have 'significant experience' of working in the NHS.

At the 2026 BMA annual representative meeting, doctors voted for 'significant experience' to be defined as five years. The vote sets the BMA position on the issue and does not mean the government will adopt this stance - but more than 2,000 doctors including GPs have signed a petition calling on the BMA to drop the five-year policy and 'adopt a fair approach that protects UK graduates without scapegoating international colleagues'.

Dr Ibrahim Toeima, a locally employed doctor who set up the petition told GPonline that a five-year experience rule could leave IMG doctors facing unemployment or a loss of visa sponsorship because many NHS non-training jobs are only available on fixed term contracts.

Specialty training

Legislation to prioritise UK graduates and the BMA vote come after a surge in competition for NHS specialty training places. The BMA said its policy aimed to support prioritisation of UK-trained medical graduates - and that the root cause of high competition was that underfunding had left a shortage of training posts. In response to the petition, the BMA told GPonline that it will still be lobbying for five years’ experience as a requirement for training places.

The petition reads: ‘The training crisis was not created by IMGs. It reflects years of inadequate workforce planning, insufficient training numbers, insecure locally employed doctor posts, and limited consultant and GP expansion. Restricting IMG progression will not solve these problems. 

‘A health service that depends upon international recruitment while treating overseas-trained doctors as expendable when competition intensifies is pursuing an unsustainable contradiction.’

Dr Toeima, who is an IMG doctor, told GPonline that the BMA policy is ‘gutting’. He added: ‘You come to work and you carry the hate, the weight of all this exclusion. You try to prevent it, you speak to psychologists, you speak to the consultant, you speak to your colleagues about it. Some people support and some people don’t. It is something that has touched a lot of people and this petition has reached so many people.’

Exclusion

Dr Saif Ahmad Malik, also an IMG doctor, who was recently working in trauma orthopaedics and is one of the petition’s signatories, said: ‘The BMA policy makes me feel excluded. It feels like what happens in your life and your problems don't matter to the organisation that you are part of. It’s your problem and you have to deal with it. You have to figure things out for yourself, if you don’t get a contract you have to leave. I do not feel represented in the organisation.’

The petition says 'doctors who complete two years of NHS medical service should be treated equally in specialty training access'. The BMA has pointed to 'analysis from NHS England...that a two-year NHS experience threshold would have a limited impact on reducing training bottlenecks' - but says the fundamental problem is a shortage of training places overall.

BMA deputy chair Dr Emma Runswick said: ‘Prioritisation for UK medical graduates has long been a contentious topic, which has been caused by years of successive poor workforce planning. We simply should never have been in a position where we have un- and underemployed doctors because there aren't enough training places.

‘Doctors have been forced to try and find solutions to a problem that was not their fault, and the BMA policy reflects the balance between needing to end the absurdity of UK-trained doctors unable to get jobs, while also recognising the invaluable contribution of international medical graduates. The BMA will be lobbying for five years' experience as the requirement for prioritisation for training places.’

You can read or sign the petition here and read BMA FAQs on its stance here.

>An ANP called Mulu back at 16:57. They took an account that Mulu had  undergone surgery to remove a pituitary tumour a week previously and that she  had been vomiting since the previous day, that she vomited when she ate food  but that she was drinking well. The disposition reached was “home  management”, this being that she was to ensure that she remained well hydrated and to eat in small amounts. They advised that if she was unable to keep fluids  down and had symptoms of dehydration, she would need to be seen in A&E.

Forget going to the GP or 111, patients with this history should come straight to ED and have bloods + a CT head.

Of course the coroner did not comment anything about the ANP.

Employers in England are still recruiting physician assistants (PAs) to treat undifferentiated patients—those who have not been given a diagnosis or been assessed by a doctor first—The BMJ can reveal.

This is despite government promises more than a year ago to prevent such practice.

The BMJ has seen several NHS job advertisements for PAs spelling out in the job description that their responsibilities will include assessing patients presenting with “undifferentiated and diagnosed conditions” and undertaking face-to-face, telephone, and digital consultations for “patients presenting with undifferentiated and diagnosed conditions.”

This approach clashes with a key recommendation of the independent review into PAs carried out last year by Gillian Leng, who is president of the Royal Society of Medicine and a former chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.1 That review gave an example of how a job description for a PA in primary care should read: “You will undertake audits and routine clinical administrative tasks. You will not be able to see undifferentiated patients.”

Doctors’ representatives said that they were “deeply concerned” over the advertisements and that some employers were ignoring the recommendations of the now 12 month old Leng review.

What was the Leng review?

In 2024 Wes Streeting, former health and social care secretary, asked Leng to carry out a rapid independent review into the safety and scope of the roles of what were then called physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs).2 The review was partly intended to address a heated debate in the NHS over the safety and effectiveness of the roles and how any new roles should work in the future.3

Published in July 2025, the review recommended that PAs “should not see undifferentiated patients except within clearly defined national clinical protocols,” and it proposed renaming physician associates as “physician assistants” and anaesthesia associates as “physician assistants in anaesthesia.”

Other key recommendations were that newly qualified PAs should gain at least two years’ experience in secondary care before taking a role in primary care or a mental health trust; that a named doctor should take overall responsibility for each PA as their formal line manager; and that General Medical Council (GMC) requirements for regulation and reaccreditation of PAs and AAs within its Good Medical Practice guidance should be set out separately from those for doctors.

After the review the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that it accepted all the report’s 18 recommendations.4

How has, or hasn’t, the Leng review been implemented?

Despite the Leng recommendations being accepted, not much has changed in terms of making them a reality.

In March the DHSC launched an almost four month consultation on legislation to overhaul the GMC’s regulation of doctors, PAs, and AAs. While this did reference the Leng review, it only looked at recommendations relating to renaming of professional titles.5

NHS England has said that the Leng recommendations are “far reaching and require cross-system partnership working to consider, plan and deliver these effectively,” so it plans to work with the DHSC, royal colleges, unions, and other relevant organisations to consider implementing the recommendations.6

NHS England issued guidance last year saying that NHS organisations should make changes to the way roles are referred to in the workplace “to ensure that patients are not under the misapprehension that they have seen a doctor.”

The DHSC has similarly said that it has brought together senior NHS leaders and government officials as part of a new oversight group to deliver the Leng recommendations and a panel of clinical experts to develop protocols on how and when PAs can see patients.

No timeline has been given for when these could be completed. In the interim, the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) campaign group says that national safeguards are needed to help protect patients and to ensure consistent implementation.

“In their absence, employers should not use local job descriptions or local discretion to allow PAs to see undifferentiated patients,” a DAUK spokesperson said. “The delay does not suspend the safety recommendation. It makes the continued advertising or deployment of PAs for undifferentiated care more concerning, not less.”

Who is concerned about this, and why?

The BMA has clear concerns about the job advertisements that mention PAs seeing undifferentiated patients.

Emma Runswick, deputy chair of BMA council, told The BMJ, “The BMA has set out a clear scope of practice7 outlining what PAs should be expected to do—it explicitly states that PAs should never manage undifferentiated patients in any setting. Our guidance is the best tool for employers to keep patients safe, as NHS bodies and regulators continue to drag their feet on introducing the most rudimentary safety measures to protect the public.

“The BMA will continue to advocate for the safety standards that patients expect, while the NHS must finally act to prevent any further avoidable harm.”

The DAUK is similarly anxious. Its co-chair Matt Kneale told The BMJ, “DAUK is deeply concerned by job adverts that expect physician assistants to see undifferentiated patients. Unless this is within a clearly defined national clinical protocol, it conflicts with the central patient safety recommendation of the Leng review and should be corrected immediately.

“Patients with new symptoms need assessment by clinicians trained to recognise serious and uncommon illness. Getting that first decision wrong can cause harm. Physician assistants should work in properly supervised assistant roles, not be used to substitute for doctors.”

Kneale added, “The government accepted the Leng recommendations in full, yet NHS England has still not delivered the national safeguards needed to make this safe. DAUK is concerned that partial implementation leaves patients exposed.

“PAs must have clear limits, senior supervision, and a nationally defined scope. DAUK continues to call for a pause in recruitment and expansion until those safeguards are fully in place.”

Steve Taylor, GP co-lead at the DAUK, said that PAs seeing and treating undifferentiated patients in GP settings remained a significant problem. “It is clear that some practices are still working on the ‘old’ NHS England guidelines which fail to take into account the Leng review,” he said. “We have significant concerns that Leng is 12 months old and is being ignored by a minority of employers.”

The Royal College of Physicians said it was disappointing to see that job advertisements were still saying that PAs could see undifferentiated patients. A college spokesperson said, “Physician assistants are not doctors and must not replace doctors. We were clear in our response to the Leng review that it was right to recommend that PAs cannot see undifferentiated patients and must be accountable to named, senior doctors.”

Caroline Waterfield, director of workforce supply and employment practice at NHS Employers, told The BMJ, “Following the initial Leng review recommendations, NHS trusts that employ PAs and AAs have reflected on the findings and worked with individual members of staff and their teams to ensure there is clarity in role and expectations, including how introductions are made to patients.”

Are there any clear answers from the government on what happens next?

No. A spokesperson for the DHSC did not respond directly to questions about the job advertisements but said, “Patients should always know who they are being treated by and receive appropriate care. That is why this government accepted all of the recommendations of the Leng review.

“We have been working with experienced clinicians to develop proposals for how PAs should work with undifferentiated patients and will set out more information in due course.”

There has been a significant rise in the number of students wanting to study medicine in the UK, figures show.

This is despite well publicised challenges in medicine in recent years, including strike action, nine health secretaries since 2020 and competition for specialty training posts.

In October 25,770 applied for medicine courses, a rise of 10.4% compared to the previous year. This rise reverses a consistent fall in the number of applications since 2022.

The highest number on record was in 2022, when 29,710 applied.

After A-level results were published last week, universities accepted 13,040 applicants onto medicine and dentistry courses.

This represents a 2% increase on last year, when 12,750 applications were accepted, but a 19% increase on 2020.

The increase has happened despite a disruptive few years for the medical profession.

Since the 2019 General Election there have been nine health secretaries, the latest being Yvette Cooper in Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s cabinet.

Industrial action has been a common theme too with 15 rounds of strike action between 2023 and this year until the BMA’s resident doctor members agreed to accept the government’s latest offer on pay and working conditions.

GP Dr Akash Gandhi runs The UKCATPeople, a website which helps students interested in medicine through the UCAS process.

He said medicine “remains an attractive career” and there are increasing numbers of students from a wide range of backgrounds considering the profession, including those who may be the first in their family.

“I think greater awareness that medicine is an achievable career path for people from different backgrounds is a positive development,” he said.

“Importantly, I don't think students are unaware of the challenges facing the profession. The strikes, pressures on the NHS and wider uncertainty around speciality applications are certainly things that students and their families are aware of when making decisions about their future.

“However, I don't think those challenges necessarily outweigh the reasons people are attracted to medicine in the first place.”

Medicine has its challenges like any profession, he added, but students recognise the rewarding aspects of it particularly if they gain work experience or shadow doctors.

University of Nottingham associate professor in medical education Rachel Woods said the Covid pandemic increased the visibility of healthcare professionals to young people.

“Many of the students starting university this year would have been in secondary school when the Covid pandemic hit. If becoming a doctor interested them during this period, it would have been quite good timing as they would have had the time to prepare, ensuring they got the GCSE and A level results needed to study medicine,” she said.

Medical schools have also increased their efforts to widen access to medicine, Woods added. “This can be a lengthy process as it requires efforts at several stages of education, starting from secondary school. So we may hopefully be starting to see this work paying off, which I really hope is the case.”

Creating future bottlenecks?

The British Medical Association (BMA) has called for a pause in the increases in student numbers until postgraduate training capacity has improved.

The union’s medical students committee chair Erin MacCabe said: "It is encouraging to see so many young people motivated to serve in our NHS, but enthusiasm alone can only carry a generation so far. Expanding medical school places without proper investment in the required infrastructure and educators risks diluting our world-class standards.

“Beyond graduation, expansion in numbers must be matched with more foundation and specialty training posts.

“While recent progress through the resident doctors' deal in England is a positive step forward, there is still a long way to go to fix the medical training pipeline to make sure this next generation of doctors can progress to become the GPs and consultants of the future.”

Professor John Alcolado, associate pro vice chancellor of a planned new medical school at the University of Wolverhampton, previously told Doctors.net.uk that calls for a managed reduction in medical school intake “looks like ladder pulling”.

“We should be honest with people and say look you can do five years of medical school – it may be then difficult to get a job.

“You might not end up being a cardiothoracic surgeon in your chosen specialty. To my mind fairness means if someone wants to study medicine, they’re aware of the risks of it – we should give them the opportunity,” he said.

Resident doctors are trialling changes to rotations to cut commutes and keep them in the same team for longer.

About 200 doctors in England will take part in pilots that will test different approaches, including reducing the geographical size of a rotation area, keeping clinicians in the same hospital trust when they move post and making rotations longer with fewer changes.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said the 19 projects could help end the “absurd” current system that can uproot doctors between different hospitals several times a year.

Resident doctors often receive very little notice of where they will be working next and the distance between hospitals can be vast, the union said.

In a Royal College of Physicians survey of doctors in training last year, 41% said geographical rotations had a negative impact on their training. Some 28% wanted them abolished entirely, and 50% said they should continue only with reform.  

NHS England said under the plans doctors should be able to travel less and stay closer to home, have more certainty about where they will be training and have more choice and control over their rotations.

Reform to the rotation system was part of the deal between the government and the BMA that ended resident doctor industrial action in 2024.

'Overdue for reform'

The pilot initiatives, which will take place across different stages of training, have been set up by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care with agreement from the BMA.

Dr Shivam Sharma, BMA resident doctors committee deputy chair and training lead, said rotations created difficulty for doctors and hospitals.

“This absurd system has been overdue for reform for years,” he said. “Doctors with their whole careers ahead of them are being sent from hospital to hospital, sometimes as often as several times a year. They are expected to uproot their lives, find new accommodation, rebuild their support networks, and adjust to an entirely new workplace – only to do it all again months later.”

While the system allows doctors to get a diverse range of experience, it is also an “exhausting burden” for clinicians, the BMA said.

Rapid changes prevent hospitals from having stable teams and doctors-in-training building strong relationships with colleagues.

The first phase of a nationwide medical training review led by NHS England published last year found the rotational structure was the second most frequently cited barrier to rewarding, satisfying postgraduate training.

If successful, the new approach should be rapidly rolled out, the union said.

Sharma added: “In some departments, colleagues barely have time to learn a doctor’s name before they move on. Resident doctors lose the opportunity to develop lasting relationships with consultants who understand their strengths, can invest in their development, and gradually give them greater clinical responsibility to become the experienced specialists we need.”

The pilots include:

• Smaller geographical footprints: in East of England core anaesthetics, the programmes have been redesigned to be within a single Integrated Care Board footprint, or geographically closer.  
• Longer and fewer rotations: some ST1s working in obstetrics and gynaecology in the South West will stay at one provider for 12 months, instead of rotating to a second provider after six months.  
• Keeping rotations in one trust or hospital, where possible: in London the Internal Medicine Training stage one programme will be in one hospital trust.  
• Offering longer duration posts for less than full-time trainees: in geriatric medicine in the North West, trainees who have been in their current placement for 12 months will potentially be able to extend it to 18 months.   
• Speciality training programmes: two programmes will be set up where resident doctors will only rotate between two trusts for the entirety of their training programme. In higher anaesthetics in the South West, for example, trainees will rotate between two sites, not three.

  

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "We know that frequent relocations can have an impact on wellbeing, retention and workforce planning for resident doctors.

“That is why we've been working in partnership with the BMA and NHS England to review rotational training and launch this pilot, marking the completion of every commitment made under the 2024 resident doctor deal.

"This shows what government and unions can achieve by working together."

One in four resident doctors in the UK said their training is adversely affected because rota gaps are not dealt with appropriately, a major survey has found.

The General Medical Council’s (GMC) national training survey also found that one in three (29%) hospital doctors who are trainers said education is harmed by staffing issues.

Additionally, 141 trainees reported experiencing unwelcome sexual conduct on a daily or weekly basis, an increase of 23 trainees compared with 2025.

The GMC described it is a “small but real” increase.

The annual survey - answered by more than 51,000 doctors in training and nearly 23,000 doctors who are trainers – found 61% of resident doctors are at moderate or high risk of burnout.

However, the GMC pointed out that many indicators, including those for burnout and reporting of discrimination have shown “early signs” of improvement.

Despite “continued pressures on health services”, doctors in training were still positive about core components of their education, with over three quarters rating the quality of their teaching as good or very good, the regulator said.

But the regulator urged organisations to take action following the one percentage point increase in trainees reporting frequent unwelcome sexual conduct over last year.

“Any rise in this measure matters, and trainees must be able to work and learn free from harassment,” the regulator said. “We will continue to expect organisations to take direct action to address this.”

There were small improvements in the number of doctors in training experiencing discriminatory behaviour, the GMC found.

In all, 72% reported never experiencing micro-aggressions, negative comments, or oppressive body language from colleagues – a one percentage point increase from last year – and 63% said they felt confident reporting discrimination without repercussions, which is up two percentage points.

Other findings included:

• 55% of trainees reported having no support from a mentor.
• 64% said they have access to leadership opportunities.
• 22% reported that their working pattern leaves them feeling short of sleep on a daily or weekly basis.
• 52%, an increase of two percentage points on last year, said the rota design helped optimise their education and development, while 80%, again a small increase, were given enough notice about their rota in advance of starting their current post.
• 61% of foundation doctors said they felt adequately prepared for their first post, a rise of two percentage points from 2025, but for internationally qualified doctors the rate remained at 45%.

GMC chief executive Charlie Massey said while it was encouraging to see improvements in some areas, the survey also highlights variation in experiences.

“Every doctor, regardless of where they train or work, should have access to a high-quality training environment that supports their development and wellbeing.

'Goodwill stretches only so far'

“By acting on this evidence, we can all create conditions in which doctors can thrive and for patients to receive the best possible care.”

BMA council deputy chair Dr Emma Runswick said it was heartening that nine in ten doctor trainers say they enjoy the role.

“But goodwill stretches only so far in an understaffed NHS, and recent attempts to cut consultant pay for this work will only make matters worse.

She added: “Nearly three in ten hospital or secondary care trainers say gaps in doctors’ rotas go unaddressed and over a than a quarter of doctors can't use their training time as intended.

“Burnout remains rife - and is worsening for some, especially GPs. These doctors do one of the NHS's most vital jobs, often without the time or support to do it well.

“Reports of sexual harassment are rising and too many still fear the consequences of reporting discrimination. Doctors deserve training environments that are safe, not just survivable.”

The Department of Health and Social Care have been contacted for comment.news.doctors.net.uk/news/5YdRbpOUtUECxrYvUBu58B

They argue that the act denies British students studying medicine at the overseas campuses of British universities fair treatment and breaches ECHR principles designed to protect against discrimination.

The students say the law effectively excludes them from NHS training, because the allocation process for the foundation programme must now prioritise doctors who trained in the UK and other priority categories.

The solicitors argue that section 1 of the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026, read with section 4, is incompatible with their clients’ human rights under article 14 of the ECHR (read with article 2 protocol 1 and with article 8) and also contravenes article 8 of the ECHR read on its own.

>"Then there’s productivity. Why should doctors have their salaries insulated from the awful service they help deliver? Some of my colleagues work fiendishly hard; plenty more very much do not. But what matters for society is that the NHS overall now performs abysmally, delivering often dismal outcomes and always for ever more money."

This guy sounds like an insufferable prick to work with. I wonder what his colleagues think about him.