Government refuses to fund UK students at new medical school

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Government refuses to fund UK students at new medical school despite ‘chronic’ doctor shortage
The centre at Worcester University could be forced to train only overseas students who are unlikely to remain in Britain

(Extract from The Guardian 14/01/2023)

A new school set up to boost the number of doctors in England has been told it will not receive any funding for domestic students – meaning that in future it may only be able to give places to those coming in from overseas.

The government is refusing to fund a single place at Three Counties Medical School, University of Worcester, despite health bosses in the area saying they are spending £70m a year on agency staff to plug a chronic shortage of doctors.

The school was set up to boost doctor numbers across Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire – rural areas that struggle to compete with big city training centres such as Birmingham when recruiting medical staff. The centre is expected to be completed in about six weeks, and it has the agreement of the General Medical Council to start training doctors from September.

However, the Department for Health and Social Care, which maintains a strict cap on the number of university medical degree places it funds, is ignoring pleas from local health trusts, hospitals and Tory MPs to pay for students to come and train at the school.

Professor David Green, vice chancellor of Worcester University, told the Observer: “The chronic shortage of staff in the NHS means that doctors are constantly rushed, so delays and mistakes happen and that is leading to a crisis of excess deaths. The question is how bad do things have to get before the government will act?”

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No NHS dentists in Herefordshire and now no UK doctors in the future, This government are hell bent on destroying the NHS.