By Catherine Tang

The NHS will be changing doctor’s training from the two-year Core Medical Training programme with a three-year Internal Medicine Programme.

IMT hopes to fill in staff shortages in certain jobs such as care of the elderly and intensive care by extending junior doctor’s training in general medicine before they specialise.

However, some doctors aren’t happy with the change as it cuts into their training as a specialist registrar, meaning less time to fully grasp the position.

CMT Representative for London, Lucy Gorard, said: “If you want to go into gastroenterology, one of your skills will be doing endoscopy […] if you’re doing an extra year in this IMT setting, you’re doing one year more as a [general] registrar and one year less as a gastroenterology registrar, that means you’ve done one less year of endoscopy before you would end up being consultant.”

Not all junior doctors are opposed to the new move done by the NHS, Chloe Doan will be one of the first doctors under the new programme and wants to specialise in care of the elderly. As IMT will be insisting that all doctors should have more training in this area, she is pleased with the result.

Dr Doan said: “People do need to be trained more on how to discharge patients especially patients with much more complex needs like geriatrics patients and having those extra years those extra general years, as a SHO [Senior House Officer] are going to be much more important than being able to have those skills.”

It is still too early to tell if the negative will outweigh the positives or vice versa. The IMT programme will start in August.