2025 Focus on physicians survey: job planning and supervision

2025 Focus on physicians survey: job planning and supervision

The first set of findings from the 2025 ‘Focus on physicians’ survey on job planning and supervision have been published. 

The 2025 Focus on physicians survey is a joint survey run by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE),  Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (RCPSG).  

There were 2,038 respondents to this year’s survey, which ran between 12 March and 2 June 2025. 

The survey data will be published in a series of write-ups throughout 2025. The three UK royal colleges of physicians will use these data to inform their work. 

Findings relating to job planning and supervision

Working patterns

• There has been a year-on-year increase in the number of consultants who reported working less than full time (<10 programmed activities (PAs)).
• Only 63% of respondents were contracted to work full time (10 PAs or more) in 2025, down from 80% in 2015.
• One PA is defined as 4 hours of activity during Monday to Friday 7am–7pm (3.75 hours in Wales), or 3 hours for work out of hours.

Job planning

• Over half of respondents (54%) said that their contracted job plan did not reflect all the work they do.
• The top three things most likely to be squeezed out during a busy week were professional development time, time to improve the quality of their service and time to train and supervise other doctors. 

Clinical and educational supervision 

• The majority of physicians said that they undertake educational and clinical supervision of other health professionals (88%).
• This usually involves supervision of resident doctors, although 42% (of the 1,251 responses to this question saying they undertake educational and clinical supervision) said that they supervise others, predominantly clinical nurse specialists and advanced clinical practitioners.
• 65% of physicians said they have time in their job plan to undertake this supervision and 61% of those who have it in their job plan said that they feel the time is adequate. 

Commenting Professor Andrew Elder, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, said:

It is deeply concerning that over half of physicians have said that their contracted job plans simply do not reflect the work they do. We know that this unsustainable position means that many clinicians face the risk of burnout and many who want to teach, supervise and mentor trainees to the standard we all wish to see are unable to do so; this lack of time for training and supervising others can cause a ‘moral distress’ for doctors in the same way that a lack of time to care for patients can do.

At a very basic level, doctors who are asked to provide training need to have the time to do so and that means having adequate protected space in their job plans that allows them to do so. Our College has consistently argued that training current and future cohorts of doctors is as important as other aspects of service delivery.

Governments across the UK, not least the Department of Health & Social Care which is currently preparing the 10 Year Workforce Plan, must take on board the findings of this survey and other key studies like the GMC National Training Survey and invest in a physicianly workforce underpinned by comprehensive, whole time equivalent (WTE) workforce planning which takes into account the increasing number of consultants who work part time.

Who responded to the 2025 Focus on physicians survey?

Over 2,000 doctors completed this year’s survey. Find out more about the role, location and specialty of those who responded.