Increased competition in the NHS in the UK could jeopardise the quality of doctors’ training, the new leader of the UK’s 49,000 junior doctors warns today (Thursday 29 September, 2005).
Dr Jo Hilborne, who has been elected chairman of the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee, today expresses concerns that private companies running treatment centres will have no incentive to provide doctors with high quality training:
“It’s not clear whether profit-making companies running treatment centres will provide training to the same standards as the NHS. Unless a mechanism is introduced to make training as important to private companies as it is to the NHS, standards are likely to drop. Junior doctors are already under pressure from changes to their working patterns and reforms to their training, and the move to private provision makes their future even more uncertain. In an NHS based on competition, there will be winners and losers. How is a trainee surgeon supposed to learn how to do a hip replacement if their hospital has lost its contract to do them? Little thought seems to have been given to doctors’ training in a market-based NHS.”
Dr Hilborne also welcomes the government’s commitment to improving access to childcare as part of the forthcoming Childcare Bill. However, she says there is room for improvement in the NHS, where patchy access to childcare creates problems for staff working antisocial shifts, and calls for hospitals to ensure that childcare is available round the clock.