An NHS deanery is a regional organisation responsible for postgraduate medical and dental training, within the structure of the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In 2013, restructuring of the NHS in England led to its deaneries being incorporated into new bodies, known as Local Education and Training Boards (LETBs), that have taken over these functions. [1]
Each deanery is responsible for coordinating postgraduate medical and dental education within a given region, to standards that are set by the General Medical Council and the General Dental Council. Deaneries are each advised by a Specialty Training Committee (STC), which includes consultants.
Postgraduate medical education begins as doctors start their initial Foundation Programme (F1/F2) jobs, where they are closely supervised and their progress is monitored across two years of training. The recruitment of doctors into Speciality Training Programmes is managed by deaneries. Once a doctor accepts a post on a training programme the deanery allocates specific jobs, arranges educational supervision and provides the assessment of whether the doctors in training have demonstrated sufficient progress.
Deaneries have been criticised in the past for not providing accurate and detailed information to applicants who have no alternative methods of finding employment within the UK, in particular for failing reliably to tell applicants exactly when and where jobs will start, what hours will be, and what their salary will be. [2] The BMA have observed "It's hard to imagine another profession where you could start salaried employment without knowing how much you'll be paid in six months' time. That's been the reality for junior doctors for years, but it may be about to change."
As of June 2008, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate have ruled that deaneries should be legally classified as employment agencies, which calls into question the legality of existing recruitment processes. [3] This has led Remedy UK to call for junior doctors, who are currently employed on a series of short-term contracts, to be given a single unified contract covering the whole process.
Recent[ when? ] changes in UK legislation mean that deaneries must give preference to applicants from the UK or the European Union. [4] This is likely over the medium term to change the make-up of the hospital registrar workforce, in which over recent years candidates from developing countries in Asia and Africa have been strongly represented.[ citation needed ]
A general practitioner (GP) or family physician is a doctor who is a consultant in general practice.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England, along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish Government, Welsh Government or Northern Ireland Executive. It oversees the English National Health Service (NHS). The department is led by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with three ministers of state and three parliamentary under-secretaries of state.
A physician assistant or physician associate (PA) is a type of healthcare professional. While these job titles are used internationally, there is significant variation in training and scope of practice from country to country, and sometimes between smaller jurisdictions such as states or provinces. Depending on location, PAs practice semi-autonomously under the supervision of a physician, or autonomously perform a subset of medical services classically provided by physicians.
Residency or postgraduate training is a stage of graduate medical education. It refers to a qualified physician, veterinarian, dentist, podiatrist (DPM) or pharmacist (PharmD) who practices medicine or surgery, veterinary medicine, dentistry, podiatry, or clinical pharmacy, respectively, usually in a hospital or clinic, under the direct or indirect supervision of a senior medical clinician registered in that specialty such as an attending physician or consultant.
A number of professional degrees in dentistry are offered by dental schools in various countries around the world.
Within the National Health Service, resident doctors are qualified medical practitioners working whilst engaged in postgraduate training. The period of being a resident doctor starts when they qualify as a medical practitioner following graduation with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree and start the UK Foundation Programme. It culminates in a post as a consultant, a general practitioner (GP), or becoming a SAS Doctor, such as a specialty doctor or Specialist post.
A senior house officer (SHO) is a non-consultant hospital doctor in the Republic of Ireland and many Commonwealth countries. SHOs usually have a minimum of 1 year post medical school training. SHOs are supervised in their work by consultants and registrars. In training posts these registrars and consultants oversee training and are usually their designated clinical supervisors.
Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) is a programme for postgraduate medical training introduced in the United Kingdom in 2005. The programme replaced the traditional grades of medical career before the level of Consultant. The different stages of the programme contribute towards a "Certificate of Completion of Training" (CCT). It has been dogged by criticism within and outside the medical profession, and an independent review of MMC led by Professor Sir John Tooke criticised many aspects of it.
A Medical Laboratory Scientist (MLS) or Clinical Laboratory Scientist (CLS) or Medical Technologist (MT) is a licensed Healthcare professional who performs diagnostic testing of body fluids, blood and other body tissue. The Medical Technologist is tasked with releasing the patient results to aid in further treatment. The scope of a medical laboratory scientist's work begins with the receipt of patient or client specimens and finishes with the delivery of test results to physicians and other healthcare providers. The utility of clinical diagnostic testing relies squarely on the validity of test methodology. To this end, much of the work done by medical laboratory scientists involves ensuring specimen quality, interpreting test results, data-logging, testing control products, performing calibration, maintenance, validation, and troubleshooting of instrumentation as well as performing statistical analyses to verify the accuracy and repeatability of testing. Medical laboratory scientists may also assist healthcare providers with test selection and specimen collection and are responsible for prompt verbal delivery of critical lab results. Medical Laboratory Scientists in healthcare settings also play an important role in clinical diagnosis. An estimated 70% of medical decisions are based on laboratory test results and MLS contributions affect 95% of a health system's costs.
NHS Scotland, sometimes styled NHSScotland, is the publicly–funded healthcare system in Scotland and one of the four systems that make up the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It operates 14 territorial NHS boards across Scotland, supported by seven special non-geographic health boards, and Public Health Scotland.
The Committee of Postgraduate Dental Deans and Directors, according to its website comprises the Postgraduate Dental Deans and Directors in the English Deaneries, together with their three colleagues for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Nursing in the United Kingdom is the largest health care profession in the country. It has evolved from assisting doctors to encompass a variety of professional roles. Over 700,000 nurses practice, working in settings such as hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, hospices, communities, military, prisons, and academia. Most are employed by the National Health Service (NHS).
A specialty registrar (StR), previously known as and still commonly referred to as a specialist registrar (SpR), is a doctor, public health practitioner or dentist who is working as part of a specialty training programme in the UK. This is known as a training grade as these doctors are supervised to an extent, as part of a structured training experience that leads to being able to undertake independent practice in a hospital specialty or working as a general practitioner.
The Medical Training Application Service was an on-line application system set up under the auspices of Modernising Medical Careers in 2007 and used for the selection of Foundation House Officers and Specialty Registrars, and allocating them to jobs in the UK. Its implementation was heavily criticised both in the press and within the medical profession, and its operation was marked by the resignation of key staff and serious security breaches. The system affected junior doctors, and so every qualified doctor in the UK who had not yet attained Consultant status.
Healthcare in England is mainly provided by the National Health Service (NHS), a public body that provides healthcare to all permanent residents in England, that is free at the point of use. The body is one of four forming the UK National Health Service, as health is a devolved matter; there are differences with the provisions for healthcare elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and in England it is overseen by NHS England. Though the public system dominates healthcare provision in England, private health care and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing and able to pay.
The sector-based work academy programme is a UK government scheme launched in 2013, which is intended to help create a skilled workforce in a business sector. Sector-based work academies help prepare people receiving unemployment benefits to apply for jobs in a new or different area of work. Work placements take place, which are designed to meet the business's immediate and future recruitment needs as well as to recruit a workforce with the right skills to sustain and grow the company's business. SWAP is administered by Jobcentre Plus and available in England and Scotland. A sector-based work academy can last for up to 6 weeks.
Core Medical Training was the two-year part of postgraduate medical training following Foundation Year 1 and 2, successful completion of which is required to enter higher training in the medical subspecialties. The programme is overseen by the Joint Royal Colleges Postgraduate Training Board, which represents the three medical Royal Colleges in the UK: the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
The Medical Schools Council is an organisation that represents 41 medical schools and one post graduate school in the United Kingdom. The membership is made up of the heads, or deans of the medical schools. It was formerly known as the Council of Heads of Medical Schools.
In the United Kingdom, an anaesthesia associate (AA) is a healthcare worker who provides anaesthesia under the medical direction and supervision of a consultant anaesthetist. Anaesthesia associates are not doctors themselves, but rather enter the role by completing a 27-month full-time training programme which leads to the award of a postgraduate diploma, or alternatively a 24-month training programme via University College London leading to a master's degree. The University of Birmingham, University College London and Lancaster University deliver General Medical Council approved courses to qualify and register as an AA. It is classed as a medical associate profession. To be eligible, a candidate must have a previous degree in a biomedical or science subject, or recognised previous healthcare experience in another role. There is usually high demand for posts when advertised, with high application to places ratios. Recruitment is usually undertaken directly by the NHS employer, before enrolling with on a chosen course.
Anaesthetists United is a medico-political advocacy group in the United Kingdom co-founded by Ramey Assaf and Richard Marks in June 2023 to campaign against the proposed expansion of Anaesthesia Associates (AAs), as proposed by the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. The group, composed of around 20 anaesthetists, undertook work to draft motions and submitted a requisition to the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) which took place on 17 October 2023. It successfully campaigned on issues relating to the training of anaesthetists.