The Government has hailed ‘another strong year’ for GP recruitment, with a 99.83% fill rate for round 1 and 2.
This brings the total number of new GP trainees this year up to 3,427, although HEE said it still expects this to match 2021 and 2022 fill rates of 4,000 via a third round of recruitment.
The spokesperson told Pulse final figures will be available ‘around November’.
Health minister Will Quince said ‘it’s fantastic to see that this is another strong year for recruitment to medical speciality training, with many different specialties such as general practice, emergency medicine and clinical radiology achieving close to or 100% fill rates’.
He also hailed the recent NHS long-term workforce plan which has pledged to increase GP specialty training places by 50% to 6,000 by 2031/32, with the first 500 extra places becoming available from September 2025.
The plan also highlighted the need to grow GP specialty training places by 45-60% by 2033, which will come from a ‘a bigger pool of doctors’ resulting from the pledged doubling of undergraduate medical school places.
‘The first-ever NHS Long Term Workforce Plan will offer education and speciality training opportunities, as well as expanding alternative routes into professional roles, which will significantly increase the medical workforce,’ said Mr Quince.
Under the plan, trainees will also begin to spend ‘the full three years of their training in primary care settings’, up from the 50% they currently spend there.
To attract more doctors to GP speciality training, HEE brought in initiatives including a campaign called ‘Choose GP’ and the Targeted Enhanced Recruitment scheme, a national incentive programme funding £20,000 salary supplements to attract trainee GPs to work in areas of the country where training places have been unfilled for a number of years.
A Pulse investigation earlier this month found that currently about one in three medical school students end up working in general practice.
However, it showed that while the conversion rate from medical school students to fully trained GPs is good, it is not all positive and problems are seen later down the line due to workload pressures and burnout.
It also unveiled concerns around the number of trainers needed to double the general practice training capacity in five years, and treble it by 2033.
Producing lot of shiny red tractors commissar why is the harvest failing and I am hungry.
Has anyone noticed that when——- after a five year slog and a years probation you are qualified to do—— NOTHING
That health minister is using misleading information to dupe the people.
A 99.8% fill rate of 3,427 places is almost 600 ( EIGHTEEN PERCENT) LESS new GP trainees than the 4,000 of last year.
And they are having to undertake a THIRD round of recruitment, to try to fill the training places with doctors who didn;t want to enter GP training (or were not good enough to) until they failed to get a better offer of another hospital specialty training place.
Government needs to stop using misleading statistics to lie to us.
I just watched as 100% of the baby chickens of Wales hatched out of their eggs today, which is a huge increase in successful hatching from the figure for Wales last year. What does that mean? – Nothing.