Responding to the publication of the 2020 National Training Survey, Professor Michael Griffin OBE said:
The Coronavirus pandemic has unsurprisingly placed great strain on an already stretched NHS, so it is sadly not surprising that 70% of doctors in training reported that their training has been disrupted.
We remain grateful for their ongoing commitment to delivering patient care during this difficult time and will continue to work closely with the GMC, Deaneries and Trusts to ensure their training and career progression needs are met.
More importantly, we will continue to give a voice to our trainees so that their concerns are understood and acted upon. For instance, ARCP panels need to be more flexible in their assessments and more done to address the growing amount of burnout. We also want to build on the goodwill and mutual support that the pandemic has prompted.
And as we prepare for a second wave, we will continue to lobby policy makers to ensure that elective surgery continues. We are hugely concerned with both the increased number of cancelled operations and the spike in waiting lists, so more must be done to ensure planned surgery continues with the minimum disruption.
As we have consistently advocated, having Covid – free surgical and diagnostic areas and rigorous testing of staff and patients are critical in maintaining elective surgery.