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

Introduction 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To address this gap, this scoping review will map published and unpublished evidence on UK-based CTF programmes, engaging knowledge users to ensure findings are relevant to practice and workforce priorities.