Promises alone won’t train more GPs
Editor Sofia Lind reflects on the latest GP training figures, arguing that political promises mean nothing without investment in training places
It should be a good news story that nearly 21,000 doctors applied for GP training this year; but instead we had to report that four in five applicants could not get a training position. The competition ratio – almost five doctors applying for every one place – is the highest on record.
At the same time, a BMA survey has revealed that three-quarters of practices say they do not have the space to provide training for new GPs. With half of respondents saying their premises are unfit for purpose, it is hardly surprising that training isn’t at the forefront of their minds.
Pressed on GP unemployment during the BMA’s special conference on the 10-year plan earlier this month, health secretary Wes Streeting said the Government ‘absolutely’ recognises the issue of doctor unemployment and is looking at ways to expand GP training places. He said: ‘I don’t want people leaving medical schools with lots of skill and experience and lots of debt, not able to find jobs.’
However, rather than spelling out what he is doing about the problem, he again pointed to the changes he made to allow GP recruitment via the ARRS scheme – something he himself has previously stressed was only a short-term sticking plaster, but which the Government has repeatedly heralded as an outright success.
As evidenced by the training application statistics and the BMA’s survey, the problems are deeper than that. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan had promised a 50% increase in GP training places, reaching 5,000 by 2027/28 and 6,000 by 2031/32. Labour’s own manifesto had pledged to deliver the plan and ‘train thousands more GPs’.
None of this should come as a surprise to the Government. A Pulse investigation from over two years ago highlighted the lack of a plan for how to achieve an increase in GP trainers in the long-term workforce plan – and it calculated that by 2033, training capacity would need to triple compared to 2023 levels in order to meet the projected demand.
Mr Streeting also told the BMA conference that money is tight, but if the Government is serious about meeting its own targets it will need to do more than talk about training numbers. It must invest in premises (and not just little fixes spread across vast numbers of practices) and in training capacity, the latter being intrinsically linked to freeing up GP capacity overall. Otherwise, all that is left is rhetoric.
Sofia Lind is editor of Pulse. Find her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn
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READERS' COMMENTS [5]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
We need.more GPs?
How many. GP full time equivalents could be freed up by using the current workforce more effectively?
Dump Appraisal and Revalidation, it’s an evidence free intervention.
Restrict CQC inspection to Practises where there is plausible evidence for concern.
Stop paying GPs to sit in meetings drinking coffee, abolish all those non-jobs in the Networks.
Financial incentives to see patients, more patients= more money, rather than fob-off phone “triage”.
Agree with Dave Haddock except it’s all too late now. Keep Our NHS Public have been warning of this arc of travel for years. So the state of the NHS (including this unhinged failure of supply-side policy in GP training) is not accident or omission or negligence by successive Tory and Labour Govts but rather is their intended policy. 30 years+ of now provably failed neoliberal economic thought, driven by capital’s interest rather than public interest, is bearing fruit. Recall defund, make broken, then privatise.
Long ago the BMA and GP contractors should have understood this and stopped the pretence of “good faith” negotiations, and taken visible action and our arguments over the heads of ministers and directly to the public. We’re in the endgame now. Let’s see what happens.
No accident fully agree.. And plans driven by capital not public interest it’s sort of all in the open now.. Not sure to what extent does the public understand this but is surely waking up to reality fast..
Increasing production of qualified GPs will NOT solve the GP-unemployment crisis.
Or will it? There will be such a glut of newly qualified GPs willing to work for peanuts, that private companies will be able to drive the salaries right down to less than that of a PA, or even PN, and then the Partnerships will see that they cannot compete.
Either that or Wes Streeting hasn’t a clue what he is talking about.
Oh – actually, that could be the problem, really.
Time to get new Prime Minister and Health Minister, I think.
That’s what you do when something is broken – throw it out and get a new one.
The government thinks it doesn’t need GPs. It does not see any differential between what they do and what any other ‘health professional’ can do. Should have drawn the redlines when ‘any other health professional’ started to make diagnoses without going to medical school. Too late now. Cannot put it back in the box. Now they will just swap ‘any other professional’ for AI. No one cares/ really gets it. Yet.