In October alone, 54,000 patients waited more than 12 hours on a trolley in A&E corridors.
Yet at the very same time, the NHS is turning away around 13 fully qualified doctors for every single A&E training job.
The reason is simple. The Government has capped specialty training posts, meaning doctors are being blocked from training to become the consultants and GPs of the future. This year, around 40,000 doctors applied for just 10,000 training jobs.
These are highly qualified, dedicated doctors who want to work in the NHS, but a broken system is pushing them into unemployment or out of the NHS altogether.
That is why resident doctors are on strike and why we are re-balloting: to fix the jobs crisis, address pay erosion, and retain doctors in the NHS.
Rather than engaging seriously with the @TheBMA, the Health Secretary has focused on rhetoric instead of solutions. What patients and doctors need now is a credible plan to train and retain the doctors the NHS so clearly needs.
You’ve waited months for your operation.
You’ve waited hours in A&E.
And yet; thousands of doctors who want to become surgeons and emergency medics are being turned away.
In 2025, Emergency Medicine had 5,081 applicants for only 357 posts; around 14 applicants for one post. 5,399 doctors applied for just 630 Core Surgical Training posts; a ratio of 8.57 to 1.
These are doctors who’ve completed years of study and clinical training, passed rigorous exams, and are ready to serve patients. But the Government refuses to fund enough speciality training places for them.
So while patients lie on trolleys in corridors and operations are cancelled, fully trained doctors are left without a pathway to specialise.
This is a catastrophic failure of workforce planning. A deliberate Government imposed cap on doctor speciality training numbers that wastes talent, demoralises staff, and prolongs NHS waiting times.
If the Government is serious about tackling long waiting lists and rebuilding the NHS, it must expand funded training posts and use the workforce we already have.
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#NuclearMedicine
The deliberate and relentless killing of Palestinian journalists is sickening beyond words — and is a desperate attempt to silence the truth about Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity.
Shame on all those who empowered Israel to murder with impunity.
I’ve reported 18 wars over 35 years. I’ve been shot at, kidnapped, threatened, nearly raped. I’ve lost friends from Sarajevo to Syria. I thought I’d seen the worst of humanity. I was wrong. Nothing compares to Gaza — or the complicity letting it happen.
#GazaGenocide#WarCrimes
I studied medicine for five years and only truly understood the NHS after working in it. Wes Streeting studied history, has never worked a day in healthcare, nearly lost his seat — yet he’s now running our health system
It’s time the health secretary was a medical professional
Israel's siege is starving the people of Gaza.
We have joined more than 100 aid and rights groups to demand action - before there is no one left to save.
Read the full statement here: https://t.co/pr9QjoskYB
I live in a country that gives military support to another country which is killing thousands of civilians while proscribing an organisation which protests about it.
Children murdered.
Doctors stripped.
Prisoners raped.
Hospitals bombed.
Mass graves.
International law shattered.
War crimes in plain sight.
Harrowing watch of the Gaza: Doctors Under Attack documentary on Channel 4. A genocide livestreamed. We are watching humanity collapse.