Gateways to the Professions

15. Postgraduate training

15.2 Legal requirements

Postgraduate deans, clinical tutors, educational supervisors, medical Royal College trainers and advisers, and the Colleges and specialties themselves should be familiar with their legal obligations. They must know about and apply, as a minimum, the provisions in relation to:

  • what is unlawful discrimination
  • making reasonable adjustments
  • the anticipatory duty
  • genuine and relevant competence standards
  • termination of employment
  • the Disability Equality Duty.

These responsibilities reflect the position at medical school. However, the trainee is now not only a doctor in training, but is also a doctor in employment providing, under supervision, a clinical service to patients.

With the contract of employment, different legal provisions come into play. Under Part 2 of the DDA, discrimination is outlawed in all aspects of employment and occupation including:

  • recruitment and selection, including advertising jobs
  • retention of employees
  • promotion
  • training.

The main provisions of Part 2 are that:

  • direct discrimination (treating someone less favourably directly because of their disability) is unlawful
  • disability-related discrimination (treating someone less favourably for a reason related to their disability without good reason) is also unlawful
  • reasonable adjustments are expected in all aspects of employment, so must be made to working conditions, job descriptions, training, progression and the workplace environment to enable or help disabled people to do their job
  • harassment at work is discriminatory
  • an employer must not victimise or treat unfavourably someone disabled or not, because they have made allegations of discrimination or brought a complaint or any action under the DDA. A complaint of discrimination may be presented to an Employment Tribunal (Industrial Tribunal in Northern Ireland).

The main difference from the education provisions of the DDA is that employers do not have a ‘duty of anticipation’. This means that they do not have to make adjustments to their premises or working practices until they are actually needed by a disabled employee or applicant. Employers must, however, take reasonable steps to find out if an employee or applicant is a disabled person. And many would regard taking up the anticipatory duty as best practice in line with the DED, regardless of the letter of employment law.

The duty to anticipate the requirements of disabled people remains in relation to the education and training components of the postgraduate period. This means that improvements must be planned in advance, reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis. Clinical supervisors should have training in disability equality made available to them.