Doctors question long term training prospects of 350 additional medical students

Doctors have raised concerns about the future training prospects of medical students after the government announced it would fund 350 additional medical school places in England for the academic year 2025-26. In its NHS Long Term Workforce Plan published last year the government promised it would double medical school places in England, from 7500 to 15 000 a year by 2031-32.1

However, a letter sent to the regulator the Office for Students in December last year revealed that the allocation of these extra places being carried over and repeated in subsequent years “will be subject to review.”2 It also said that there would be no new capital funding in 2025-26 for medical schools that are taking on more students and that those that do will have to set out whether capital will be needed in future years because of the 2025 expansion.

The government said that the 350 additional places had been allocated to medical schools across the country but had been targeted at areas where doctors were needed. The South East of England will be the region receiving the most places (77), with 34 going to the newly launched University of Surrey Medical School, which will open its four year, graduate entry bachelors degree medical programme this September.3

In April the BMA expressed concern about the uncertainty facing hundreds of new medical graduates who have yet to receive details of where they will be working in August.4

Chinelo Nnadi and Shivani Ganesh, co-chairs of the BMA’s Medical Students Committee, called for improvements in the way new doctors were allocated their first role in the NHS. “This year there are hundreds of graduating medics who still don’t know where their first placement as a doctor will be and may not find out until as little as three weeks before. When they do start, they’ll be compensated with pay that’s been falling in real terms since 2008 and facing further bottlenecks in accessing specialty training, leading many to consider whether staying in the NHS is worth it,” they said.

Although 350 more medical student places is good news on paper, Nnadi and Ganesh said, more places alone wouldn’t be enough to ensure more doctors in the future. “To maintain the quality of teaching, increased numbers of medical students will need increased numbers of academics and educators, which currently are declining, and universities need funding for facilities.”

Royal College of Physicians president Sarah Clarke welcomed the increase in medical school places, an issue on which the college has campaigned, but she said there remained questions to be answered on the long term training prospects of these and other medical students. “When they graduate, these students will need jobs. They will need teachers and supervisors and protected time to train,” Clarke said. “Yet almost a year after the publication of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan we still don’t have the detail we need on how and where postgraduate training places will be increased, where the patient demand is, and how the NHS will train and supervise these new doctors.”

On X the GP Neena Jha said, “This year 15 036 junior doctors applied for only 4000 GP training posts. Over 11 000 were unsuccessful. Unless we have an increase in training posts, the medical school number increases are meaningless.”5

Core surgical trainee Sidd Raj asked on X, “Is there a plan to increase the number of training posts? There are multiple bottlenecks after the mandatory two years of foundation training, even if the number of foundation training posts increase in line with the extra medical school places that have been announced.”6

Responding to a query about foundation training posts for additional medical students, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said, “The Long Term Workforce Plan sets out that we will ensure there is adequate growth in foundation placement capacity, as those taking up these new places begin to graduate, and a corresponding increase in specialty training places that meets the demands of the NHS in the future.”

Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, said the announcement of the 350 additional places was a hugely important moment for the long term workforce plan. “The ambitious blueprint for our workforce is a once in a generation opportunity to put NHS staffing on a sustainable footing, particularly as we continue to adapt to new and rising demand for health services,” Pritchard said.