The Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians welcomes the report from the Medical Training Review, England.
The recommendations recognise the important roles that the Royal Colleges must play as postgraduate medical education and training is reformed. There are many parts of the review that are encouraging, and we especially support the need to urgently address the bottlenecks in training that have proved so discouraging for trainee doctors.
Similarly, we are encouraged by the indication that careers of resident doctors, whether in formal training posts or in local employment, will be properly supported as will those who provide training and educator roles. The aim to provide generalists who can also provide specialist skills is certainly very important for the NHS of the future as will be doctors who are able to work across some of the traditional boundaries that have existed.
We do believe this is the correct direction for training of medical practitioners and we look forward to working with all stakeholders and helping to bring the aims of the document to fruition.