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The genitourinary medicine consultant and trainee workforce is reviewed annually by Health Education England and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) to make recommendations for specialty training numbers. In a simple model, knowing the demographics of existing consultants and their retirement plans coupled with the predicted trainee throughput should result in a balanced workforce.
The information used to inform the review come from a variety of sources in an attempt to make it as accurate as possible including:
The electronic staff record for all trusts in England: this relies on an individual consultant's job title. It provides information on the total number of contracted sessions, but does not capture if sessions are not undertaken in genitourinary medicine, for example management or deanery roles.
The annual RCP consultant survey: this only has a 40% completion rate. The methodology used applies the information gathered to non-responders which may be invalid. It is possible that non-responders are not equivalent to responders: they may be on maternity leave and include more part-time workers. In …
Footnotes
Contributors We both attend the HEE and RCP workforce meetings and collate the data for submission. JS drafted the paper and AR edited it.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.