Professor Wendy Reid responds to Independent review of junior doctors' morale, training and support

HEE welcomes the opportunity arising from Sir David Dalton’s letter to work with Dame Professor Sue Bailey and other colleagues to respond to the challenge that junior doctors do not feel valued and morale is low. It is important that our work is inclusive and provides the whole system with advice about changing the culture of how we work together in the NHS.

HEE has also committed to taking forward the areas of work agreed with the BMA and NHS Employers as part of the non-contractual talks that were held before Christmas as I have detailed in my letter dated the 15 January 2016.
However, the present postgraduate medical education system is too rigid and provides limited opportunities for doctors to have flexibility outside rules-based programmes. We are clear that these issues need to be managed if doctors are to have genuine opportunities between leaving medical school and completing training.

Putting patients at the heart of everything we do in education and training means ensuring that all staff have their educational needs met either through formal training programmes or through CPD supported by employers. HEE is proposing to review its educational support structures so that all doctors, not just those in training programmes but also the thousands in so-called Trust posts, get advice and educational supervision, the sort of support that is currently denied to them.

We are also proposing to review the rules around training to reduce the unnecessary bureaucracy. This includes a review of how assessment of training is managed. HEE will be doing this work in transparent collaboration with all stakeholders and will be consulting with organisations and individuals over the next few weeks to develop this work further.