Flexible training opportunities in the European Union

This paper compares the opportunities for flexible (part-time) specialist training in the UK and elsewhere in the EU in the overall context of the rising numbers of women doctors across Europe. Few other EU countries appear to provide the same opportunities for flexible training as the UK, despite high percentages of women medical students and women medical graduates. There are important differences in training patterns across the EU and some reasons are proposed for why flexible training may be more difficult to implement or may not be required elsewhere in the EU. Reasons include less centralized health care systems and more rigidly structured training programmes. In the context of four main factors affecting medical manpower--medical unemployment, contracted working hours, maternity provisions and duration of training--both the health authorities' need to implement flexible training and the trainee doctors' demand for it would appear to be greater in the UK than in other EU countries.