The number of medical school places is to be doubled under landmark plans to ease the NHS staffing crisis.
Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan to be announced this week will curb the nation’s reliance on foreign-trained doctors and nurses and “streamline the process from classroom to clinic” to ease the pressure on health workers who are “run ragged” with competing demands.
The 15-year blueprint, devised by the NHS and backed by ministers, will involve doubling medical school places in England from 7,500 to 15,000 and investing an extra £1 billion in training medical professionals beyond the next election, according to reports.
As doctorin‘ became female dominated obviously we needed to train more doctors – maternities, part time working etc.
Government didn’t. Which tells us what we need to know about government planning, doesn’t it?
Sunak launches all out attack on NHS productivity. There’s a problem. Throw lots of people at it. Be sure to call it “investment”.
Bear in mind that a certain percentage of those places will go to foreign students who will then leave the country to work elsewhere. On top of that, a certain percentage of the Brits will leave for better pay and conditions abroad. So how many will actually benefit the NHS?
The need to expand medical schools to cope with increased female admissions was pointed out by me to a couple of academic medics in the seventies. They rounded on me: their disagreement had not been about solving the problem but about point-scoring against each other.
It was a lesson: surprisingly few people who look at a problem think how they might solve it. They’d rather just bemoan it, clutch pearls, have a fit of the vapours, and so on. “Twerps” as my dear old Dad would have said.
@ dearieme
*I* was aware of “office politics” in the 1970s: I tried to steer clear of it, albeit with limited success.
The number of places is determined by the Medical Guilds. Got the vague idea that May managed to get an agreement to bump the numbers up. This might be something previously announced.
“15 year blueprint”, lol. Idk who Rishi thinks he’s fooling. Who is this meant to con?
Feels like the Vichy Tories are only talking to each other, the electorate has already moved on from these cockbreathed losers and isn’t coming back.
Ducky,
“The number of places is determined by the Medical Guilds. Got the vague idea that May managed to get an agreement to bump the numbers up. This might be something previously announced.”
That’s the problem right there. You don’t ask the guilds. You just train more people. The guilds give you any shit, you march their leader into Number 10 and explain that you will use all the powers of the British state against them – pharmacists get more work, more outsourced NHS work globally, the end of NHS job guarantees. You’ll burn them to the ground out of sheer fucking spite towards them.
The problem is that the Tories are gutless.
Limit the number of people who can train as nurses – (Wanna be a Nurse? Gotta go to Uni, Gotta get a degree, Gotta rack up a shit load a debt), and then be amazed that there aren’t enough nurses.
These people are complete and utter cunts and should be dispatched into pits full of lime. Overseen by lions. With flamethrowers.
As with many other publicly-funded outfits, bureaucracy has entirely swamped the NHS. Swamped to the point that many staff cannot stand to work in such an environment and have left, and I’d guess that that’s one of the major reasons the NHS is understaffed. Does Sunak really think his spiffing wheeze is going to alter any of that?
What the NHS requires before anything else is a major carving out of all the bureaucratic staff that have no direct connection with the work in hand, ie HEALTH. The money saved might then go some way towards appointing new, relevant staff, hopefully free of the ludicrous shackles that are costing us, the taxpayers, a king’s ransom.
How anyone will achieve this is beyond me, but it won’t happen with this latest loopy scheme.
In the 1980s, I was teaching in Further Education on a course which was the equivalent of 5 O levels and got kids into nurse training. The government announced that nursing would become a graduate profession. The ex-nurses who ran the course – mainly old-school sensible types – greeted this with a mixture of laughter and disbelief. Not necessary, they said, and would lead to a shortage of nurses, the importation of foreign labour, and the decline of the NHS.
Britain is a stakeholder democracy, i.e. if you’re not one of the State’s favourite stakeholders, you can fuck off.
Those stakeholders are, in no particular:
* The Higher Education racket
* The Civil Service
* The CBI
* Donors
* The United States government
* The City
* The institutional media (BBC, not GB News)
* Quangos
* Big “charities”
* People who read the Guardian unironically
* Seething geriatrics who will die angry about BREXSHIT
* All those illiterate tribesmen from Bumfuckistan who need “safe and legal routes” to getting on British benefits
Have I missed anyone?
Steve, the Unions?
@ Steve
NHS
The TUC, especially leaders of “public sector” unions [that includes RMT and ASLEF because DfT believes railways should be state-owned and run]
*All* journalists
Actors
Spivs promoting the latest fashionable “miracure cure” for the world’s ills
The number of places is determined by the Medical Guilds
The General Medical Council, the British Medical Association, the Medical Schools Council, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Royal College of Physicians all say that the UK should be training more doctors.
Why would the guilds not want more members?
What people say does not always have a lot in common with what people do.
… is nuking from orbit, salting the earth, and starting again with a health care system that works for the patients rather than being captured by the producers.
Keep the NHS. (stay with me)
Fund the GPs as currently – per registered patient. (No, really stay with me)
Fund the hospital’s along a similar line – per operation/treatment. (I’m getting there)
Then allow the private medical system to go Gonzo alongside.
Make it easier for doctors to open small surgeries, like a dermatologist you can just walk in without a GP referral. Or a GP practice that you can register with (taking yourself off the NHS surgery list) and pay for your private appointment so the GP is paid per appointment, not by the NHS for having a big list.
Then we’ll see how much people actually love the blessed NHS (Praise be upon it).
It would drastically reduce waiting times and cost for the NHS (which we could praise by taking it out back and shooting it)
Sooner or later (and I think it’s already happening) the public’s apparent esteem for the NHS will reverse itself. Eventually everybody will run into their hands and get shafted some way or other. The politicians will still be churning out ‘our NHS’, the envy of the world and all that nonsense while the reputation of the dismal scam will have deteriorated beyond any chance of recovery. It can’t be fixed if they don’t realise the problem. Or if they do, probably.
I like the idea of the Drakon.
Maybe if you can voluntarily unregister yourself from your GP and be given a £400 voucher for doing so (guessing this is the right price point to scare the horses in general practice) and then you can use that to go private, then we could be on to something less inglorious.
As a snark, I am disappointed in Corbyn: he promised me a vote for the Conservatives would mean that Donald Trump sorts could buy the NHS. Must be a few thousand voted Conservative on that promise.
As doctorin‘ became female dominated obviously we needed to train more doctors
Adding 10m people to the population in 25 years didn’t help.
Very much worth noting that for decades the BMA and GMC have capped medical school places by saying that they won’t recognise medical degrees from courses they haven’t signed off. Their argument has always been that they need to control the quality of training offered, but in reality an oversupply of doctors would lead to lower salaries and as effectively trade unions they could never sanction that
They have completely overhauled the ‘NHS’ here over a couple of years and to my surprise it works brilliantly!
We used to have a State Health System which was utter shyte and a brilliant Private Healthcare System.
You register with a GP who gets a bunce for each patient. I can literally walk into the surgery at any time and be seen without an appointment and a minimal wait.
If the GP refers you or you need additional treatment you can go to any outlet you choose to receive it – including the previously private hospitals.
The whole thing is held together with a brilliant IT system which allows the doctor/specialist to see all your records on-line including X-Rays, MRI Scans, etc. The patient has access to it too.
There is obviously tax involved but patients also contribute.
As an example: I fractured my ankle on the 2nd of June. Was taken straight to the GP who charged €3 and referred me for X-Rays which were added to my computer record.
Was driven to the radiologist, walked (hobbled) straight in and had 3 X-Rays (€10). Was immediately given the disc and result (fracture) so called my GP who referred me to the Orthopaedic Surgeon.
Drove straight there, hobbled in and was put in a cast and given meds (€6).
Drove to the Pharmacy and picked up my prescription (all done on-line) which cost €3 (€1 for each item).
The whole thing was under two hours…
I’m not sure if it is sustainable but it is excellent and doesn’t cost 45% of Government spending…
Because if there were more people allowed to ply a trade, the amount each tradesman could charge would fall. Gotta keep that scarcity value.