Doctors' training in UK 'must be revamped

Updated on: Friday, November 25, 2011

Training of doctors in Britain needs to be revamped in order to help them gear up for the arrival of cutting-edge medicine in the next decade, UK's top medical body has said.

According to the new head of Academy of Medical Sciences, Prof Sir John Tooke, the next decade is expected to see rapid advances in medicine, especially in futuristic fields like genetics and stem cell therapy.

But, he said, there is a risk that when new and improved methods of diagnosis and treatment arrive, doctors could be left behind due to our rigid and traditional postgraduate training programmes.

Prof Tooke claimed that "unparallelled opportunities" in modern science could be lost unless a "talent pipeline" is created to train doctors to exploit them, 'The Daily Telegraph' newspaper reported.

He said: "If I have one criticism of the way we develop the medical and scientific workforce, it is that we are not sufficiently orientated to who we should be developing to pick up those challenges."

Training curricula, he said, should be revised to ensure that they include the latest research to come out of Britain's academic institutions and keep junior doctors up to date with the latest developments.

He added: "We are not preparing people adequately for the type of exciting future opportunities that will present themselves. Medicine, as any other profession, must evolve to meet society's needs and that is what we aim to do."

Doctors' training in UK 'must be revamped

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