From beach to bedside: lessons from the Australian treatment system for dealing with the challenges faced by the UK’s addiction medical workforce crisis

Over the last decade in the UK the number of medically trained addiction specialists has halved, to record low numbers. Despite acknowledgment of this crisis by the UK Government in its recently published 10-Year Strategic Plan for the Addiction and Recovery Workforce , psychiatric training remains the only available route to gain specialist medical accreditation in the treatment of addiction disorders. This article asks if it is time for the UK to embrace the creation of a new physician-led addiction medicine specialty akin to models developed in Australia and other peer countries.