Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that consultants have adequate protected time to support and mentor junior doctors.

Under the current contract for consultants in England a proportion of a consultant’s job plan is allocated to Supporting Professional Activities which may, where relevant, include time to support and mentor junior doctors. The arrangements are determined locally, and it is for trusts to provide that there is adequate time in consultants’ job plans; but there are strong safeguards in place through the new junior doctor contract to ensure that junior doctors get the training and support that they need.

Educational supervisors and junior doctors are jointly responsible for personalising each junior doctor’s work schedule according to the junior doctor’s training needs and the opportunities within the post. They must regularly review progress against agreed learning objectives, including ensuring that the doctor’s workplace experience delivers the anticipated learning opportunities.

If the day-to-day work varies significantly or regularly from that in the work schedule in a way that impacts on training opportunities, junior doctors should raise exception reports with their educational supervisor, copied to the Director of Medical Education. Where concerns relate to hours of work, exception reports are copied to the Guardian of Safe Working Hours. Exception reporting gives the employer the opportunity to address the issues and make timely adjustments – including, but not limited to, changes to a junior doctor’s work schedule.

Directors of Medical Education are responsible for addressing concerns relating to training issues and for reviewing the outcome of exception reports to identify whether further improvements to the junior doctor’s training experience are required. This could include changes to consultant job plans.

The Director of Medical Education in each trust must report annually to the trust board on all work schedule reviews relating to education and training. Trust Boards must provide copies of these annual reports to external bodies, including local offices of Health Education England, the Care Quality Commission, the General Medical Council and the General Dental Council.