Do The Royal Colleges restrict membership numbers?

[Blushah]

Please tell me if you think this should be 'in the news', not here, but I've just watched a BBC1 news thing about 'the shortage of radiologists' -which embarrassingly morphed into vox pop- and an irrelevant one at that, within 30 seconds..... BUT, am I correct in thinking that the Royal College of Radiologists have helped to create this problem by restricting their numbers in order to keep their 'profits' up? Now suddenly, as the need for people able to diagnose medical images has mushroomed, the RCR is fighting a rearguard action against the private providers, like Nighthawk, and advanced practitioner reporting Radiographers.

You reap what you sow.

Where did you get this information from? The royal colleges usually have minimal influence over how many training posts are created by Health Education England. I would be surprised if the RCR were any different.

I think you are blurring a lot of issues into one.

Nighthawk will still need to employ properly qualified radiologists.

The RCR will be responsible for setting the membership exams but this is not the same thing as how many training posts there are for radiologists which are set by HEE.

Yes the RCR (and other Royal Colleges) make money from trainees sitting exams and doing resits, but they also make money out of membership fees. As soon as you have passed the exams you can be a member so arguably they would make more money the more members they have.

NHS workforce planning for doctors is notoriously difficult as it takes so long to train them - the classic example being it was thought we would need loads of cardiothoracic surgeons as heart disease increased. Angioplasty was invented and suddenly there was a glut of trained and half-trained surgeons with no jobs to go to as they simply weren't needed any more and nowhere near enough doctors to do the new angioplasty procedures.

So, there are lots of reasons why there may be a shortage of radiologists (massive expansion of the specialty, unpopularity with juniors being obvious off the top of my head) but not the one you are thinking of.

Many Nighthawk radiologists are not UK based. In fact, it's an ideal job for a British radiologist who emigrates to Australia but who doesn't want the hassle of getting Australian registration, as it's their daytime during the time that many NHS in-house radiologists don't want to cover night-shift.

It's Health England, apparently, who dictate the number of training posts available. They have been obstructive over many years, I was told by a radiologist yesterday. He also said that they are failing to recruit from India, as they aren't interested in our 'third world conditions' ...

Health Education England will be responsible for training posts. They are presumably allocated a sum of money by the Department of Health and Social Care. They can train more radiologists but it will mean fewer cardiac surgeons or paediatricians. I don't believe that anyone is being deliberately obstructive or protecting special interests - workforce planning is difficult and there simply isn't enough money in the system to provide everything that is needed.