RCPE Press Release
28 May2013
Commenting on the publication of the government’s mandate to Health Education England [1], Dr Neil Dewhurst, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE), said,
“The RCPE welcomes the publication of the mandate for Health Education England and in particular its emphasis on developing and supporting a highly trained medical workforce of a sufficient size and depth to deliver the future, and increasingly complex, care needs of patients in England.
“We support many of HEE’s short-term objectives, such as improving dementia training and the increased focus on the provision of safe and compassionate care. However, caution will need to be exercised in changing the balance of the workforce; the intent to ensure that 50% of medical students and, in turn, specialty trainees enter GP specialty training should not be at the expense of supporting and recruiting into the acute medical specialties which are already proving less attractive career options due to the intensity of workload and working pressures within the NHS, and resulting in increased unfilled training posts around the UK. In this regard we support the commitment to review the workforce issues in emergency medicine, but believe this should be extended to include similar problems in the wider acute medical specialties which look set to worsen in the absence of comparable action.
“Overall, the mandate is a laudable and ambitious statement of intent and we look forward to working with HEE in its collective delivery”.
[1] A mandate from the government to Health Education England, Department of Health, May 2013
