This blog is designed to keep you up-to-date with Careers Education, Information and Guidance (CEIAG) available locally, nationally and through the school. I’ll be posting information about employment and training opportunities available locally as well as details of open days and useful websites. The world of education, employment and training opportunities is changing rapidly so keep checking in for the latest information.

Mr Cross


Sunday 14 June 2015

Are opportunities in Medicine increasing or decreasing?

David Cameron has promised that 5,000 new GPs will be recruited. However, an article by Peter Stanford in the Independent he notes that GP numbers are falling due to early retirements and GPs going into private practice, whilst at the same time fewer graduates are opting to go into general practice.

In 2013 there were 84,395 applications for Medicine and 7,515 places, 1,800 students with AAA at A level did not get offered a place. However, the UK has one of the lowest ratios of practising GPs per head of population, with 2.71 per 1,000 people, ranking us 24th out of 27 EU countries. Given the 11:1 ratio of applications to places there is no shortage of well qualified people who want to be doctors.

Mr Stanford says that a constraint is that it costs £175k to train a doctor and takes 5-8 years and thus is beyond the electoral time-frame for a government. He said that 30% of GP training places around the country were empty following the first round of recruitment, with some areas having a 65% vacancy rate. 97, 910 of the 267,000 registered active doctors had studied medicine outside of the UK, with 29,000 from other EU countries and 25,000 from India. He says that given the £175,000 cost of training a UK student, and the long gestation before a student become a doctor, there is a huge pressure on the NHS to keep student numbers down and recruit from overseas. He quotes a senior A&E consultant who said, “Were getting doctors on the cheap, and that’s the dominant philosophy in the NHS right now”. [ source: GTAssociates ]

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.