“Emergency medicine is a very strong specialty with a lot of passionate people”


ROUND


Has staffing been a serious issue? Yes – that’s the other big bucket. There’s no doubt that the NHS is chronically understaffed. I can only speak for the clinical workforce in emergency departments and in the short term we are struggling badly. However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Last October, after nine months of negotiation, we launched probably the most comprehensive workforce strategy in College history – a comprehensive plan for growing the workforce, reducing attrition amongst trainees and retaining the older workforce. We hope over the next four to six months that we can begin to drive that forward. It is a four-year program but we really want to get it up and running in the next few months so that it begins to bear fruit by this coming autumn.


Is there currently an overreliance on locum and agency staff in emergency medicine? Yes. We are spending around £2.9 billion on locum and agency staff in the NHS and about £464 million of that is being spent in the emergency department per year. So that


was a key driver and a lever behind the workforce strategy – to put something sensible in place and drive down that cost.


Are you worried about the effect of all this negative publicity on recruitment to the specialty? I have been doing emergency medicine for a long time and in the last 30 years being a doctor, on numerous occasions people have said ‘oh, there is a massive crisis in emergency medicine, nobody will go into the specialty, it’ll be awful’. However, against the odds, we’ve continued to slowly grow as a specialty, though we are still a long way short of the staff numbers we need. But if you take the broad trend, emergency medicine is a very strong specialty with a lot of passionate people. We can only hope that it will continue to grow in the face of adverse conditions.


Such unprecedented stress on the NHS leads to the obvious worry of staff burnout. How do you personally de-stress? Everybody is different but it’s a big issue for emergency medicine because we are always at the top of the list when it comes to burnout. Six years ago we developed a College strategy on burnout called Creating successful, satisfying and sustainable careers in emergency medicine. You can check it out on our website. It’s an area I’m very passionate about. Personally I tend to have a glass half-full approach to


life. I have a great family. My kids are ages 7 to 12 and they and my wife keep me on the straight and narrow.


Interview by Jim Killgore MDDUS INSIGHT / 11


Photograph: RCEM


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