A survey of junior doctors by the General Medical Council (GMC) shows that 19% of paediatric trainees are at “high risk” of burnout while half rated the intensity of their workload as “heavy or very heavy”. In addition, 12% of paediatric trainers surveyed said they were at “high risk” of burnout.
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Professor Steve Turner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the findings are a “huge worry”.
“Trainees are the backbone of our current paediatric workforce and will be its future consultants,” he said.
"Our trainees are key to all aspects of child health services and these results are an inevitable outcome of constantly bearing the brunt of the rising and heavy workload all of our members face.
"We are already experiencing gaps in trainee rotas on paediatric services across all the countries of the UK and these workforce issues are being felt directly by children and young people in waiting lists, as well as by other paediatricians who have to fill in these gaps, usually at very short notice.”
Prof Turner welcomed the new government’s pledge to create a Child Health Action Plan and inclusion of the Children’s Wellbeing Bill in the recent King’s Speech. However, to deliver these there will need to be support for the child health workforce, he said.
“If the government is serious about creating the healthiest generation of children and young people than ever across all four nations, they must immediately turn their attention to child health workforce planning,” he adds.
"In England, the present NHS Long Term Workforce Plan has ignored child health entirely. Adult nurses have increased by 92% whilst the rise in child health nursing is 0%. There has been no discussion about the wider child health workforce, including paediatricians. We need an evidence based, sustainable, long term child health workforce plan rolled out as soon as possible.”
As part of its wider report, the GMC has called for more trainer capacity and notes that plans for the workforce could fail without wider support for trainers.
