Rising competition for training positions is putting “immense strain” on “overburdened and burnt-out” resident doctors, according to experts.
It comes amid warnings that not enough medics are being trained to “meet the needs of our future population”, particularly in deprived areas.
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is now calling for a comprehensive review of how doctors and medics are trained.
In a new position statement, the college claims competition ratios for internal medicine training (IMT) are “growing rapidly”, with applications outstripping the number of posts available by 73% in 2024.
Dr Hatty Douthwaite, a member of the RCP’s resident doctor committee, said: “Rising competition for training jobs is putting immense strain on our current resident doctors, who are already feeling overburdened and burnt-out.
“We don’t have enough doctors in training to meet the needs of our future population, especially in areas of deprivation with greater levels of ill-health.
“It’s also vital that we take a step back and look at the entire postgraduate training pathway.
“The world has changed so much in the past 10 years, which is why we’re calling for a comprehensive review of how and where we train doctors.”
Under the current NHS workforce plan, medical school places will increase to 15,000 a year by 2031.
However, the RCP said there is an urgent need to invest in creating more training places to ensure the expansion is successful.
Medical school can last between four and seven years, with graduates then applying to complete a two-year foundation programme, during which they move around different specialities.
A third of the way through the second year, medics are asked to choose which speciality to train in.
This usually takes three years to become a GP and five to eight years for other specialities.
Dr Mumtaz Patel, chairwoman of the RCP’s next generation oversight group and RCP vice president for education and training, said: “These young doctor graduates expect to continue their medical education in the NHS and want to continue to give something back to the system that trained them.
“Instead, we hear that they find themselves frustrated at every turn, increasingly worried about the growing competition for a limited number of training places.
“We urgently need to support early career doctors to grow their expertise. After all, they are the NHS consultant workforce of the future.
“This is a complex issue, and there are no easy answers, but we need the UK Government and the NHS to acknowledge publicly that this is a real problem facing many of our resident doctors, and we need them to take swift action to address competition ratios ahead of the next round of recruitment to NHS training posts.”
Sean Coghlan, chairman of the RCP student and foundation doctor network, said: “Our foundation and early career doctors have been failed by the current postgraduate medical recruitment process.
“Concerns over unemployment and career progression are consuming resident doctors, who are looking with dismay at a system that has failed to adapt to the changing landscape of exponential increases in application numbers.
“Without urgent intervention, we risk abandoning a generation of UK medical graduates to an uncertain future.
“We urgently need to understand why competition ratios are changing so quickly and improve the way we shortlist, interview and appoint doctors in training, using mechanisms that ensure foundation doctors are strongly enabled to progress into further training programmes.
“This must be accompanied by a wide-ranging review of postgraduate training.”
