New ‘generalist’ training for doctors from next year

Health Education England has said that new ‘generalist’ training for doctors will be launched next year as part of a bid to overhaul the way clinicians work in the NHS.

The organisation, which is responsible for £5 billion of education and training for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff in the NHS, told The Independent that would launch new generalist training schools for junior doctors from next summer in the belief that health staff will need a broader range of skills to treat patients in the future, with an ageing population meaning many patients will have a number of conditions at the same time.

Sheona MacLeod, HEE’s acting director of education, said the organisation was working to ‘establish the infrastructure for generalist schools’ to support final-year medical students and junior doctors in their first five years of postgraduate training. It is hoped that this will be in place by August 2021.

The schools will aim to help doctors develop ‘key generalist skills, together with other health and care professionals, and to understand local service and population need’.

Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “Generalists are becoming increasingly important as we respond to an ageing population with multiple health conditions. One of the biggest barriers to getting more generalists is the lack of medical trainees – 45 per cent of consultant posts in medicine were unfilled last year due to lack of medical registrars completing training. There is a lot of work to do to increase the value and importance placed by the NHS on generalism in secondary care. This will take a significant culture shift but work is already under way.”

Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “We know that healthcare has always evolved, sometimes rapidly as witnessed in this recent pandemic. The next generation of medical professionals will need to be trained to adapt and meet the needs of the future, whatever they may turn out to be.

“It is right that there is emphasis on the role of the doctor as a local leader as part of the multi-professional team, firmly rooted in the community, with the breadth of skills to be able to respond flexibly to changes and future challenges in healthcare delivery.”

HEE has outlined its vision for what a doctor’s role and skillset might look like in the next decade or two, taking into account the changing nature of disease with people living longer and suffering a number of conditions. It said patients will expect more ‘shared decision-making’ about treatment while doctors will need to work more in local communities and within broader teams of professionals such as nurses and non-medical staff who will be responsible for different aspects of patient care.