NHS National Medical Director Professor Sir Steven Powis and Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty are to lead a review to make postgraduate medical training the ‘best in the world’  – and the Mapping Doctors team are ready and willing to support this aim. Since 2022, we’ve been working with resident doctors, SAS and LED colleagues, consultants and GPs across our case study sites, thinking about what makes a satisfying career, and how we might need to change medical training to account for inequalities in workforce distribution that lead to inequalities in access to care.

Getting the review of training right is vitally important – if we can’t improve the working lives of doctors in the UK, there is the risk that they will move to other countries, reduce their working hours, or leave medicine entirely, meaning that access to healthcare will get even worse, particularly in areas where it is most needed, and health inequalities will increase.