About Specialty Doctors and Associate Specialists within KSS Deanery

About SAS Doctors

In 2008 the Department of Health announced new funding of £7 million to “an envelope of funding available for SHAs to be used to support SAS doctors’ development.”  It was particularly to provide career support for SAS doctors including opportunities for top-up training following Article 14 assessment1.RecommendationsIn April 2008, NHS Employers published “Employing and Supporting Specialty Doctors: A guide to good practice”2. Some of the important recommendations from an educational development perspective included:

• Employers should use the professional development framework for specialty doctors.
• All specialty doctors should undergo an effective appraisal that:
  1. Ensures a specialty doctor is trained in being an appraisee,
  2. Results in a personal development plan with clear achievable objectives,
  3. Identifies the appropriate professional developments and study leave to support the maintenance of and development skills in a planned way identified through the appraisal process,
  4. Is supported by a portfolio of evidence.
• Employers should support specialty doctors in any efforts to meet the requirements of Article 14 applicants to the Postgraduate Medical Education Training Board by supporting progressive development in the post and gathering necessary evidence, particularly when this fits with local workforce planning requirements.
• Employers will need to work closely with SHAs to ensure that any allocated funding is used effectively to create the structures and processes necessary to support the development of specialty doctors.

Our response

In May 2008, KSS Deanery as part of the NHS South East Coast, asked all Trusts and PCTs to bid for new funding to support SAS doctors and possible uses would include:

• Undertaking a careful needs assessment of CPD of all your SAS or other Trust Grade doctors, in particular, if any wish to re-enter specialty training,
• Providing funding for the educational governance arrangements for SAS doctors,
• Agreeing to fund specific developmental needs which may often have been present for some years including backfill costs,
• Setting up the enhanced study leave budget for SAS doctors.

At the end of the financial year in March 2009, every Trust had to produce a summary of how the funds had been allocated so far and replies were received from every organisation that had received funding.  The feedback from that process has been summarised in a short document3.The key messages from this was the strength of feeling that there should be local control over the funding, there should be great flexibility to meet individuals’ specific Continuing Professional Development needs and the understanding that there were basic generic development and appraisal development needs that needed to be addressed in this group of key clinicians.For 2009/2010, every Trust has had to identify an official SAS tutor or representative who will be actively involved in the distribution of funds.  They will also attend one if not two meetings at the Deanery during the course of the year to discuss developing the programme and further support to Trusts.  Individual Trust representatives’ name should normally be fully accessible thorough each KSS postgraduate medical education centre or via Trust Directors of Medical Education, or in PCTs via the Medical Directors or Heads of Human Resource.SAS doctors within the KSS Deanery should refer to the Trust Leads listing to identify their local lead.References

1. Correspondence from Department of Health: "Funding for Specialty Doctors and Associate Specialist Development Opportunities".
2. "Employing and Supporting Specialty Doctors: A Guide To Good Practice", Department of Health/NHS Employers, April 2008.
3. "KSS Deanery SAS Summary of Usage", April 2009.