NHS England ‘urgently needs 2,200 more A&E consultants’
We attended a really good East and East Midlands Conference on rural health today and this headline resonates in the context of a number of key issues discussed there. It tells us:
Hospitals are being urged to urgently more than double the number of consultants on duty in A&E units in order to ensure that patients receive safe care. The NHS in England must recruit 2,200 extra A&E consultants in the next five years, more than the 1,632 who already work there, according to the body representing emergency medicine doctors.
The increase is needed to help the NHS avoid the sort of winter crisis that occurred last winter and to stop A&E doctors quitting due to burnout, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) claims. Dr Taj Hassan, the college’s president, said the costs of such a dramatic rise could be covered by redirecting the £400m a year hospitals currently have to spend on locum and agency A&E doctors as a result of understaffing.
“It is vital that we get our staffing right. Each emergency medicine consultant in England is responsible for around 10,000 patients a year. Our staff are working to the very limits of their abilities to provide safe, compassionate care. This is leading to burnout and doctors leaving the profession, creating a vicious circle,” said Hassan, a consultant in Leeds.
The growing number of doctors choosing to work part-time, and the continuing rise in demand for A&E care, also help explain why so many more consultants are needed, Hassan added. The 1,632 existing consultants make up over one in four of the 6,261 doctors overall who work in A&E in England; the others are mostly trainees.
Hassan also urged NHS bosses and ministers to increase the number of training places available for A&E doctors from 325 to “at least 425” a year to help eventually give units all the medics they need.
However, whereas all training places in the speciality were taken up in 2015-16, one in 10 went unfilled this year. Hassan also wants steps taken to tackle the fact that 40% of would-be A&E doctors drop out during their six-year training.