Juniors being ignored on service improvement

Junior doctors in the NHS are willing and able to help improve health services, but they don’t feel valued or heard, a survey reveals.

The report authors suggest junior doctors are “an untapped NHS resource” at a time when the NHS needs to draw on all the help it can get.

The survey asked juniors a range of questions about their working life, including their views on their role and future.

Ninety per cent of the 1,500 respondents said it was “extremely” or “very important” to feel part of a team in their NHS organisation, with a similar proportion answering that doctors needed to be effective leaders to  “a very great” or “great extent.”

But despite nine out of 10 respondents saying that they had ideas for ways to improve services, only one in 10 said they had had their ideas implemented.

Forty four per cent had tried and failed to get an idea implemented or felt unsure how to go about it.

Lead researcher Dr Alexandra Gilbert, department of clinical oncology, St James’s University Hospital, said: “We have demonstrated that the junior doctor medical workforce has both the desire and the ability to start contributing to improvement in the NHS, but feels that the environment in which they work is not sufficiently receptive to their skills.”

When asked how valued they felt, overall, more than 83% of juniors said “not valued at all” or only “sometimes valued.”

Seventy eight per cent felt undervalued by their chief executive, a similar proportion felt undervalued by their employing organisation, while 79% felt undervalued by the NHS as a whole.

While three quarters did feel highly valued by their non-consultant medical colleagues, almost 60% said they did not feel equally valued by senior consultant colleagues, the research in BMJ Quality and Safety finds.

The authors say that their findings indicate that junior doctors are adapting to new roles within the NHS, but feel unable to realise their full potential as agents of change.

They point out that junior doctors frequent rotations between different hospitals, organisations, and specialties enable them to readily spot good and bad practice, and that all doctors on the frontline have a key role in improving the quality of care.

The research concludes: “If the government is to achieve the aim of improving productivity and quality in the NHS on a restricted budget then all employees need to feel valued and engaged to optimise organisational performance.”

Read the report.

Tags: Juniors