EADT: Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Trust could lose medical training deal with University of East Anglia

Andrew Hirst of the East Anglian Daily Times reports:

Suffolk’s mental health trust risks financial losses and reputational damage because of its poor performance training medical students.

Directors discussing the programme at last week’s board meeting were told the University of East Anglia (UEA) had proposed to remove its students from the trust because of the poor standard of teaching for undergraduates.

The university’s students receive training at trust-run facilities in east Suffolk, central Norfolk, Yarmouth and Waveney, which provides around £921,000 a year in service increment for teaching (SIFT) funding for the NSFT.

Medical director Bohdan Solomka presented a report to the meeting, which said UEA’s concerns represented a “key risk to the trust’s finances and reputation.”

He said that while consultants enjoyed teaching, time pressures meant less than 60% of training was being completed, compared with a 90% target to be achieved by September.

The NSFT runs a separate training programme from west Suffolk for students from Cambridge, which is said to have been far more successful. Dr Solomka said the money for that scheme had been ring fenced to ensure teaching was provided.

We’ve written about how Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation trust (NSFT) has known about this crisis for ages but has taken no action against those who should have been delivering the teaching programme. Instead, NSFT Chair and ‘merchant banker’ Gary Page yet again demonstrates the typical, simplistic knee-jerk reaction of the NSFT Board: blame front line staff for its own failings:

“It seems they don’t want to play ball,” he added. “Why don’t we just haul them in and tell them to do it?”

Click on the image below to read the article in full story on the EADT website:

EADT Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Trust could lose medical training deal with University of East Anglia

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