The Medical Schools Council said in a new report that the NHS needs 5,000 more medical students to maintain a steady supply of doctors and deal with a drop in numbers coming from Europe.
The body representing UK medical schools has called for a 50 per cent increase in medical students and warned that criticism from GPs could deter new doctors from entering general practice.
The council says an additional 5,000 new places are needed, which will come at a cost of £1 billion and will take the total number trained to 14,500.
On pressure on GPs, Council President Professor Malcolm Reid said the indications from the general practice raised from students are “very negative”.
“Public criticism of public conversations about general practice, especially with regard to issues such as face-to-face or remote consultations, is very damaging to the confidence of GPs and the public. While these issues need to be addressed, these criticisms are Nature is very harmful in the short and potentially long term,” he said.
The government was accused of criticizing GPs over face-to-face appointments after Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced a league table for GPs offering face-to-face appointments.
Today’s report is the first time the Medical School Council has addressed the issue of UK doctors joining the workforce. The report shows that the number of UK doctors in 2019 was the same as in 2015 (7,511), but the number of EU doctors declined by about 7 per cent over the same period, while recruiting from outside the EU at the same time tripled to 7,130. Period.
Professor Reid said, “It is not that international doctors are not as good as those in the UK are qualified, but the question really is whether a highly developed country like the UK should depend on other countries for its doctors and nurses.”
He said: “Jeremy Hunt [who was health secretary] said in 2017 that the NHS needed a long-term approach to the sustainability of doctors. This has been said on several occasions but did not happen to the required extent.
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The report called for an additional 13 new medical schools and expansion of existing medical schools to meet the required number of doctors. However, it acknowledged that the cost and capacity of increasing medical school locations would be an issue. New methods suggested include apprenticeships and more online learning.
Prospective medical students at the University of Exeter were offered free accommodation and £10,000 to defer their medical school location as a record number of students applied for medical school this autumn. The number of medical places in England is usually limited due to subsidies required by the government to fund students, which is approximately £180,000.
This summer the Department of Education announced it was lifting its cap to accommodate additional medical students due to the Covid A-level disruption, but universities minister Michelle Donelan and a health minister, Edward Arger, said medical and dental schools directed to adjust its proposal. year to ensure that they were not oversubscribed this year.
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Credit: www.independent.co.uk /
