• Junior Doctor Contract
• Exception Reporting
• Postgraduate Medical Education

Junior doctors provide service to the NHS while learning under supervision. As employees, they are salaried to serve their patients. As learners, they must strike a balance between training and service provision over five or more years of postgraduate education. The Secretary of State for Health recently expressed his concern that juniors must not ‘miss out on training because of service pressures’ and committed to improve ‘working lives and training experience’.1 The ongoing review of the 2016 Junior Doctors Contract seeks to tackle these issues.

We believe that the contract is no barrier to the quality or quantity of education. Improving training depends on fostering a culture that respects learning as the equal—or even primary—facet of a junior doctor’s work.

Trainees now work shifts, as new ‘work schedules’ detail the expected hours of work and learning. Every clinician knows that this is …