First year qualified doctors could provide unsupervised treatment – Risks

Patients ‘put at risk’ by plans to allow newly qualified doctors (in their first year) to treat patients.

Patients will be put at risk by plans to allow doctors in their first year of qualification to treat people as soon as they leave university instead of doing a year’s work under supervision, medical leaders have warned.

Plans to allow new medical graduates to treat patients will put lives at risk, medical leaders have warned.

At present, graduates must complete a foundation year under the supervision of an experienced doctor before they can be registered with the General Medical Council and licensed to practise independently.

Under plans from the medical training body, Health Education England, the GMC would register graduates as they leave university after five or six years, freeing them to treat patients without further supervision.

Medical leaders will raise concerns at the British Medical Association conference in Harrogate this week – June 2014 -, saying that the plans will put patients’ lives at risk and jeopardise graduates’ employment chances.

The plan was put forward to solve a crisis in the training of doctors where there is an oversupply of medical students graduating and a shortage of foundation year training places.

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