GP applications fall by five per cent, Pulse reports

According to Pulse, applications for 2016 GP training have declined by five per cent compared to the previous year, suggesting the government may not be able to achieve its target of delivering 5,000 more GPs by 2020.

Leaked figures revealed that the proportion of doctors applying for GP speciality training starting in August 2016 has reached a record low, despite a national advertising campaign aimed at promoting the profession.

The data found that just there had been 4,839 applications for 3,790 GP training posts across the UK for August 2016. This compares to last year’s figures where there were 5,112 applications for 3,609 places, a three per cent decline.

Health Education England (HEE) has promised to recruit 3,250 GP trainees per year by August 2016 in a bid to achieve 5,000 more GPs by 2020. However, since it takes three years to train a GP, this year’s trainees will be the last to qualify before 2020.

Deputy GPC (General Practitioner’s Commission) chair Dr Richard Vautrey said: “There are fundamental issues that the whole system has to address in terms of reaching out to medical students and young doctors around general practice. The only way to really tackle that is to address the root cause, which is the workload pressures and lack of funding in general practice itself.

“Young medical students are bright men and women and can see the evidence for themselves about the pressures in general practice, particularly during their GP placement in training.”

However, a HEE spokesperson contended: “The story does not paint an accurate picture as this is very much an on-going recruitment process that still has months left to run. So this is merely speculation as application numbers do not mean fill rate figures. We have shown that we can influence figures with direct action such as the round three figures from last year.’