Now medics will be taught how to balance the books in hard-up NHS
‘They do not realise they need these skills’
FOR decades, family doctors have been expected to perfect a good bedside manner.
But in today’s cash-strapped modern NHS doctors must be able to balance the books as efficiently as they can take a patient’s temperature.
Now doctors are to be trained in business management as part of a radical response to the changing nature of healthcare.
A national ‘entrepreneurship, management and leadership skills’ teaching programme, to be pioneered in September at University College London, is expected to be offered to some medical undergraduates in Scotland this year, with a rollout planned across the country.
The move comes after the General Medical Council said new guidelines will place more emphasis on the need for medical students to acquire business skills. The training programme has been devised by plastic surgeon Chevonne Brady and Dr Mark Zarb, a lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.
Their research paper, published in the Scottish Medical Journal, argues that young doctors ‘often feel overwhelmed’ and unprepared for the ‘non-clinical demands of today’s NHS’.
Miss Brady said: ‘Often your biggest stress isn’t your sick patient, it’s “how do I find this information to perform an audit” or “how do I get funding for this patient to have this procedure”?
‘People assume you can do it because you are a professional person, but you don’t have any information on how to do that. The one thing we can do to improve morale and patient care is to improve non-clinical skills.’
Miss Brady, who is studying for a degree in medical education at Dundee University, surveyed 50 of its final-year medical students. Of these, 98 per cent said they had received no entrepreneurship training and 96 per cent no managerial teaching. The paper states: ‘Junior doctors do not realise they need these valuable skills until it is too late.’
Professor Colin Melville, the General Medical Council’s director of education and standards, said: ‘The next generation of doctors must be equipped with the full range of skills necessary to deliver a safe and effective health service.
‘This is reflected in our “Outcomes for Graduates”, which set out what UK medical students must be able to do by the time they graduate from medical school.
‘These standards will include educational outcomes in leadership and management that all medical schools must deliver.’