Leading academic warns of ‘worrying’ Sovietisation of British medical profession
Contemporary developments in British medicine have concerning similarities to historical Soviet practices, a leading academic claims.
In a new commentary published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Professor Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine highlights several “worrying parallels”.
Professor McKee describes how, after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union aimed to increase medical education vastly. Medical training moved out of universities into freestanding institutes and courses were shortened to between four and four-and-a-half years. Targets for training new doctors were rarely met, Professor McKee says: “Yet this did not prevent success being claimed, with fabricated data and stretching of definitions.”
Professor McKee compares this with recent UK healthcare policies, including a commitment to double the number of medical school places by 2031. This is to be done, Professor McKee notes, “without increasing resources proportionately”.
A significant concern is the erosion of professional autonomy among UK medical practitioners. Professor McKee explains: “Practising doctors will play a much smaller role in clinical teaching, removing the role models that often inspired their students. The autonomy of the universities has also been curtailed, as in 1930, with the introduction of a national licencing examination.”
To address immediate shortages, the UK has introduced physician associates, which Professor McKee likens to Soviet feldshers. He says: “In many hospitals and primary care facilities they have become substitutes for [doctors]… Growing concerns about patient safety have been ignored.”
Professor McKee criticises ambitious plans that often fail to deliver: “In the Soviet Union, ‘any cabin or barn where it was possible to put beds was declared a hospital.’” He warns that, like Soviet plans, UK healthcare reforms often involve “highly imaginative use of data.”
Professor McKee concludes with a call for greater transparency and improved governance. He says: “The current proposals to change the nature of the medical profession should not become another avoidable mistake.”