Clinical Teaching Fellow programmes as a strategy to support the delivery of NHS workforce priorities: a scoping...

The National Health Service (NHS) faces mounting pressure from an ageing population and the backlog of care following the COVID-19 pandemic. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out a strategic framework to address these pressures through three priorities: train, retain and reform. The plan outlines a range of measures, including the doubling of medical school places over the next decade. Realisation of these ambitions is constrained by limited training capacity, as existing educators face significant pressures due to clinical demands. Clinical Teaching Fellow (CTF) programmes provide resident doctors with protected time for education and may help expand capacity and alleviate workforce pressures on established educators. Despite their rapid growth, CTF programmes remain under-described, and their contribution to NHS workforce priorities has not been systematically examined. To address this gap, this scoping review will map published and unpublished evidence on UK-based CTF programmes, engaging knowledge users to ensure findings are relevant to practice and workforce priorities.

The review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and reported in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) extension for Scoping Reviews. Evidence will be identified from academic databases (British Education Index, EMBASE, ERIC, MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science) and grey literature sources (Google Scholar, NHS and medical school websites, deanery pages and job-advertising platforms). Two reviewers will independently screen and extract data using a piloted form, with discrepancies resolved by discussion or a third reviewer. Extracted data will undergo descriptive analysis and narrative synthesis, guided by a Theory of Change framework to identify how CTF programme inputs, activities and outcomes relate to NHS workforce priorities. Knowledge users will be engaged throughout the review to refine research questions, inform source selection, interpret findings, and shape dissemination.

Ethical approval has been granted. All participants will provide informed consent. Participant contributions will be pseudonymised, and data will be managed in accordance with UK data protection legislation. Dissemination will be informed by knowledge users to ensure that findings on CTF programmes, including reported outcomes and identified gaps, are shared with those involved in delivering or supporting CTF programmes and with NHS stakeholders responsible for workforce priorities in training, retention and reform.