Shadowing for junior doctors

This year all newly qualified doctors across the UK were given the opportunity to shadow the doctors whose posts they have now taken up.

Shadowing is a requirement we set in Tomorrow's Doctors and The Trainee Doctor. However it has previously been implemented inconsistently across the UK, with varying arrangements depending on the medical school.

In 2012, for the first time, every final year medical student in the United Kingdom was given the opportunity before their official first day, to shadow the doctor whose post they would be taking over, helping to equip them with the local skills and knowledge needed to provide safe care from day one of their placement.

This year, over 7,000 newly qualified junior doctors are entering the Foundation Programme, and each one needed to be provisionally registered to be able to take up their training post.

This is always a very busy time of year for our Registration team and despite the added pressure of the introduction of the shadowing scheme requiring them to work to even tighter deadlines, they successfully delivered on time.

Professor David Sowden, co-chair of the Medical Programme Board of Medical Education England (MEE) responsible for overseeing the scheme in England, praised our contribution.

He said: 'Shadowing will equip our new doctors with the local knowledge and skills needed to provide safe, high quality patient care from their first day. The GMC have put in an immense amount of work to make sure doctors received their provisional registration early enough to allow this to go ahead.'

Read more on the Medical Education England website.