Professor Eilis McGovern:

I refer again to training. We are working with the training bodies on more clarity about the training journey, making it shorter and trying to encourage them to have a single specialty training duration, which is not divided into basic and higher but to have seamless training in order that people have certainty for even longer. For example, anaesthesia and surgery both have seamless training programmes. In anaesthetics, it is a six-year programme. If people are successful in getting onto that programme, they will get a six-year training agreement and as long as they reach their milestones, pass their examinations, etc., at the end of six years, they will be recommended to the Medical Council for entry onto the specialist register. People are voting with their feet. Anaesthesia is an attractive training programme now. Other training programmes are recognising that one of the benefits of change is that it brings others along. These two specialties have shortened their programmes by one year as part of that process.

Our junior doctors feel isolated and uninformed. The MET unit will visit all six medical schools to meet the final year medical students for an information session about the intern year and then we will meet all the interns in those locations to talk to them about training opportunities. In September, the forum will have a national training day to which all trainees are invited and all the training bodies will provide separate opportunities for junior doctors to talk to specialists in the area in which they are interested. We have asked that all the training bodies have trainees included on all their important committees in order that the trainees can have a say in how the training is delivered. We have requested that clinical programmes incorporate trainees into their committees in order that the trainees again have an input into how the health service will be delivered in the future. We have asked the training bodies to do exit interviews with those who leave training. Up until now, we have just collected the numbers to establish the attrition rate for each training body but we have asked them to interview the trainees in order that they can give us information about why they are leaving. We can then try to identify where we can make improvements.

The final piece of the jigsaw is longer term medical manpower planning. That function has been added to the remit of the MET unit and we will work with all the stakeholders to come up with a medical manpower plan for the health service that, we hope, will give further clarity to trainees in terms of where the opportunities will be in future.