News of Wales - Issue 1
October 2005
Dr Iain J Robbé, Chairman of the Medical Academic Staff Committee looks at a career as a medical academic and asks: “Is it on a knife edge.”
Careers for medical academics in Wales, as elsewhere in the UK, stand on a knife edge. Expanding numbers of students (290 places in Cardiff in 2004/05 compared to 200 places in 2000/01) are being met with rapidly decreasing numbers of medical academics as lecturer posts are cut and some specialties are reduced.
The BMA Wales office has helped medical academics collectively and individually with their honorary consultant NHS job plans and consequently in recent months most Welsh academics have reported satisfactory agreements.
The BMA Wales office has also helped medical academics individually when requested with their University job plans. However the BMA cannot assist on a collective basis because the Universities in Wales do not recognise the BMA as a Trade Union with formal negotiation rights in the higher education sector
Following pressure from BMA Wales, the managements of the Welsh NHS Trusts have reluctantly agreed that the honorary contract holders should have the benefit of the new Welsh disciplinary procedures by virtue of their honorary contracts. The Trusts have accepted that they will be responsible for discipline in clinical matters and not the university employers. The joint BMA/Welsh Assembly Government negotiating forum has set up a disciplinary sub-group whose membership include the BMA staff side and NHS managers. The sub-group will be modifying the English Department of Health model protocol for disciplinary procedures.
Meetings have been held with Welsh Assembly Government opposition members to explain the difficulties for medical academics in Wales and to seek their support particularly in relation to openness about the funding given to Universities for medical academics.
The UK annual conference of medical academics received motions from Wales on many of these issues including job planning, disciplinary procedures, trade union recognition, and funding for medical education. A further motion concerning apparent discrimination was not reached. However there was discussion at local and national level about our regret that applicants to medical schools from lower socio-economic groups appear to experience disadvantage during the application and selection processes, as identified in the BMA survey entitled “Demography of Medical Schools”, and we believe there is a strong case for measures to counter the disadvantage.