Resident doctors on the Doctors\u2019 Association UK (DAUK) committee have spoken out about the growing crisis in medical specialty training.\r\n\r\nDAUK spokespeople contributed to an article in a national newspaper, warning that increasing competition is leaving many young doctors in professional limbo and risking long-term damage to the NHS workforce.\r\n\r\nDr Shonnelly Novintan is DAUK\u2019s Learn Not Blame lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is currently working in a trust-grade post, and described trying to secure a higher specialty training position as \u2018nerve-wracking\u2019\r\n\r\nDr Novintan, who wants to train in plastic surgery, was unable to find a single training post in her region this year. Nationally, there were only 42 posts for more than 280 applicants.\r\n\r\nSpeaking to the i Paper<\/a>, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s very much on my mind that this is my second time applying.\r\n\r\n\u201cIf I weren\u2019t to get a job this time, that would mean two years out of training,\u201d adding it was a \u201csubstantial time to put your life on hold\u201d.\r\n\r\nAccording to the i Paper<\/a>, there were 92,000 applications for just 12,800 specialty training places across the UK in 2024.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s a ratio of 7.2 to one. In some fields, the competition is even steeper such as 98 applicants per role in sexual health and 74 per post in cardiothoracic surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miss Maya Machesney is DAUK\u2019s medical student co-lead and a final-year student at the University of Sheffield.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt feels like a random lottery,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re worried that getting into specialty training will become less about passion and more about simply getting a job.\u201d\r\n\r\nDAUK has called for urgent expansion of training places to match the demand.\r\n\r\nDr Machesney said: \u201cIt\u2019s a massive oversight of workforce planning.\u201d\r\n\r\nRead the article in full in the i Paper<\/a> online\r\n\r\nDAUK committee members are all volunteers and speak to the media about issues facing frontline doctors in their own time. Please support our work by joining DAUK<\/a> or donating to our GoFundMe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Resident doctors on the Doctors\u2019 Association UK (DAUK) committee have spoken out about the growing crisis in medical specialty training. DAUK spokespeople contributed to an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[717,391],"tags":[706,708,700,718,707],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resident-doctors","category-students","tag-dr-shonnelly-novintan","tag-maya-machesney","tag-resident-doctors","tag-specialty-training","tag-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Medical student<\/h3>\n\n\n\n