The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has published a blueprint for the doubling of medical school places that it considers essential to get the NHS workforce back on a sustainable footing over the next decade.
This work began before the pandemic but COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of increasing the number of doctors we have, as well as nurses, other clinicians, beds and equipment.
The RCP wants the government’s lifting of the cap on medical school places in England this year to be maintained with a larger, ongoing increase in the numbers of places, acknowledging that workforce shortages have hampered the NHS’s ability to provide care during the pandemic and placed additional pressure on staff.
Launched at the RCP’s Medicine 2021 conference, ‘Double or quits: a blueprint for expanding medical school places‘ follows up the call for expansion made at the organisation’s annual conference in 2018.
The new report recommends that the government doubles the number of medical school places from 7,500 to 15,000 per year, at an annual cost of around £1.85 billion – this is less than a third of what hospitals spent in 2019/20 on agency and bank staff (the RCP’s 2019 census found that on average locums account for around 10% of consultants in UK hospitals, with 4% having 30-40% locums).
Other recommendations include consulting with medical schools about moving towards an apprenticeship-style final year of medical school when developing expansion plans, to help new doctors feel better prepared for practice. It also recommends that expansion plans, and the process of allocating places, encourages people from diverse backgrounds into medicine to better reflect the communities the NHS serves.
Professor Andrew Goddard, president of the RCP, said: “Since I first made the call for a doubling of medical school places at our annual conference in 2018, the NHS has faced the biggest challenge in its history with COVID-19, but the pandemic has also inspired a new generation to pursue careers in the NHS.
“The lifting of the cap on medical school places in England this year was welcome and the government should now cement this change and build upon it, to signal its ambition for the NHS. We need to offer more places next year, and even more the year after that. We know that 2020 will be a year to remember and we want 2021 to be the year we took the opportunity to invest much more in a homegrown medical workforce.
“The challenges our health service faces will not disappear overnight but if we do not act now we are storing up potentially bigger challenges for the future. More than that, investing in a sustainable NHS workforce is also investing in a healthier population and that is something I believe we are all ready to buy into.”
You can read ‘Double or quits: a blueprint for expanding medical school places‘ here.