‘It’s heartbreaking’: resident doctors in England face halt on new training posts

Withdrawal of additional speciality training roles amid strike deadlock has left some doctors with uncertain future

After almost two years on the NHS frontline as a resident doctor, Heather Gunn says she is bracing herself for unemployment. Like many of her colleagues, she was desperate to secure one of the up to 4,500 additional training posts the government agreed to introduce in England over three years to help doctors progress into more specialised fields.

The posts were promised in negotiations between the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), and the government in a long-running dispute over resident doctors’ pay and job security.