The College of Emergency Medicine wants to extend the duration of training for the specialty because there is now insufficient time to develop experienced consultants.
It is due to submit an application by 23 December to the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board to extend higher training by a year.
Currently, emergency medicine trainees do two years of Acute Care Common Stem (ACCS) followed by four years in specialist training (ST3 to ST6). The intention is to add an additional ACCS year.
Dr Wayne Hamer, consultant in emergency medicine and chair of the training committee at the college, explained that the request is because the ACCS curriculum and assessment system is large and complex and the trainees need this additional time.
Dr Don MacKechnie, vice president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said the gradual reduction of hours over recent years - with the reform of training and WTD - had compromised the volume of cases doctors working in emergency medicine handled.
“Emergency medicine is a broad church and you can never get too many cases to improve your understanding,” he said. “We’ve just lost too many hours out of the system for the trainees to acquire those competencies they require to become consultants in the specialty.”
Medical Education England were asked by the government earlier this year to review the WTD and its impact on training and appointed Professor Sir John Temple as their review chair. He’s due to report early next year.
A number of other colleges are believed to be considering applications to extend training but are awaiting the outcome of the review.
Dr Richard Marks, head of policy at pressure group Remedy, commented: “The calibre of British consultants in the past was based on their breadth of clinical experience, and appointment to the grade signified that a level of expertise had been reached.
“Modernising Medical Careers set out deliberately to shorten the length of training and narrow the breadth, and it is surprising that it was so widely supported. The shortening of hours has exacerbated the situation. We welcome the planned move by the college to extend training, and hope other colleges will consider doing the same.”
Remedy called on PMETB to be proactive and review all the training programmes they approved a few years ago in the light of the new working and training patterns.
PMETB said the request would receive consideration when it was received. Hamer said if PMETB decline the request the college will still look to expand ACCS to three years and cut higher training by a year to accommodate it.
