RCP responds to ‘A healthier Wales’ refreshed actions

As hundreds of doctors gathered in Cardiff yesterday for the RCP’s Update in medicine conference, Dr Hilary Williams, vice president for Wales, said:

‘The RCP welcomes the 2024 plan for health and social care from the Welsh government. It’s good to see many of the RCP’s own priorities reflected in these refreshed actions from ‘A healthier Wales’, especially the focus on reducing health inequalities, embedding action on the climate emergency, ensuring the workforce strategy is implemented and strengthening research capacity in Wales. We also welcome the focus on digital and data.

‘But we now need to understand the detail of how things will be improved. We need to see a tangible, deliverable action plan with specific milestones – otherwise how will we know that this work is actually making a difference to people’s health and lives? We need to close the gap between acute and community care by focusing on what matters to patients. The NHS in Wales needs to support and empower clinicians to change things at pace and scale. No more tinkering at the edges of a broken system – it's time to invest in real change.

‘Increasingly, doctors want to work in a different, more flexible way. The workforce strategy needs to look beyond training and grapple with how we recruit and retain staff in the NHS as well as train them. We need to make the NHS an attractive place to work and support doctors to develop and flourish in their careers.’