60,000 new doctors will target problem drinkers

Sixty thousand new doctors will be specifically trained in the next ten years to identify and treat people who are drinking too much. Medical schools have been allocated £650,000 to do a scoping exercise next financial year to see how alcohol misuse training can be added to the curriculum.

The findings will enable a first tranche of medical schools to make the necessary changes - and test them - before full roll out. Within three years, every medical school in the country will have alcohol training on the curriculum.

Alcohol misuse costs the NHS around £1.7 billion every year. For every £1 invested in specialist alcohol services for dependent drinkers, the public purse saves £5, including a £1.65 saving for the NHS.

Speaking at the BMA's Public Health conference, Dawn Primarolo will say:

"Doctors and nurses are our eyes and ears when it comes to identifying problem drinkers. It's absolutely essential we give them the training they need to get drinkers the help they need before they become a burden to themselves and to the NHS.

"There are around 10 million people drinking at levels which are, or could be, causing serious harm. It's those people we must get to. "This is something the BMA has been calling for. Within ten years we should have 60,000 newly qualified doctors who have been trained to deal with alcohol misuse."

Doctors who are already qualified won't miss out. All doctors will be offered new training using an e-learning package which will be available later this year. And a new web-based teaching facility will be available to the whole of the NHS this autumn.

This mirrors the Government's new priority - to get more frontline health workers to target problem drinkers and to measure alcohol-related hospital admissions.