Impact

SMERC’s focus is on policy and practice priorities, notably workforce planning, support and development. 

SMERC has:

• Identified how best to support medical students, trainees and staff, and hence help recruit and retain trainees, and ensure NES has the right staff, in the right places, to meet healthcare needs.
• Collaborated with health economists to identify that compensating doctors-in-training financially if training posts do not meet their preferences is likely to be, at best, a “short term” solution to filling training posts – improving working conditions is likely to be a more sustainable approach, one which will have more impact on retention.
• Made major externally recognised contributions to understanding the importance of the clinical working and learning environment in medical careers decision making.
• Played a central role in changing practice related to optimising effective selection into medical school, in Scotland, the UK and beyond.
• Worked at a national policy level to understand how best to attract applicants from diverse backgrounds to medicine.
• Provided evidence to underpin leadership and management development that enables positive change, values and behaviours within the medical workforce.
• Provided a focus for research collaboration across the five Scottish medical schools and NES and, increasingly, other relevant bodies across Scotland.
• Provided intelligence to NES and ultimately Scottish Government on topics including widening access to medicine and workforce planning.

Additionally, SMERC members proposed the creation of UKMED, an exciting new resource, which can be used to address previously  inaccessible important questions as well as workforce planning.

This page was last updated on: 15.01.2018 at 12.25