NHS manpower has been in the news this week following the draft report published on the Health Service Journal (http://www.hsj.co.uk/) that The NHS workforce planning team is predicting a 3000+ consultant surplus by 2011.

Also of concern in this document was the proposal that a subconsultant grade should be introduced to cut costs and deliver service.

The President of BAPS has also been in the Bulletin of the RCSEng stating his concerns over the lack of trained surgeons capable of performing paediatric surgery, and questions which direction paediatric surgery should take (http://tinyurl.com/y5ards).  This debate is currently being undertaken at BAPS, but as yet no formal policy has been formed as to who should be delivering paediatric surgery, and where.

I therefore believe that we are at a critical time where the views of trainees can substantially inform and develop policy, and we can influence how we will be working in the future.  However, we can only do this with evidence that shows how we want to proceed.  With this in mind, I have designed the following survey:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=290053093879

The idea behind this survey is that the data will be presented to BAPS (and on the Yahoo group!) on behalf the trainees and hopefully guide/form their policy to future work patterns.   We need a good response, and hopefully if we get enough respondents I would aim to present the data at the BAPS congress in Edinburgh, again on behalf of the trainees, in order to get as wide an exposure as possible.

I appreciate that there will be no "one size fits all" option.  What I want to do is to say how various numbers of trainees would work.  I start from the position that we should resist the implementation of a subconsultant grade and this data should not be used to argue or for this case, but people want this to be done, then I will adjust my stance if the support is there for subconsultants.

Please complete the survey, and ask your colleagues to do the same.  Please also post as much free text as you can, as these replies are very informative too.  All responses are anonymous.  Comments and the survery data will hopefully be disseminated to BAPS but no individuals will be recognisable.