A marketing campaign and financial incentives have successfully boosted GP trainee recruitment, the Welsh Government has said.
Last week health minister Vaughan Gething announced Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) had recruited a total of 176 trainee GPs across Wales this year.
This increase represents a 58% rise in uptake of training posts since 2018.
Over the last four years, the Welsh Government has worked in partnership with HEIW and NHS Wales on a marketing campaign known as ‘This is Wales: Train Work Live,’ designed to make Wales the destination of choice for junior doctors.
The scheme offers a £20,000 incentive for trainees who take up jobs in locations with traditionally hard to fill posts, and a universal program offering a one-off payment for trainees covering the cost of their final exams.
Mr Gething said: ‘This is a fantastic achievement against a backdrop of the greatest challenge that NHS Wales has ever faced through Covid-19’.
A further recruitment round will be completed in autumn this year.
It comes as GP trainee numbers in England have risen by 15% to reach ‘record-breaking’ numbers, the Government announced last month.
