Scrap trainee doctors’ bursaries for student loans, think thank urges

All upfront payments for the training of medics should be scrapped and replaced with student loans, think tank Civitas has recommended.

Civitas’ report, entitled ‘Supplying the Demand for Doctors: The need to end the rationing of medical training places’, suggests that moving to a fully loan-based system would help to solve the issue of doctor shortages.

Under the current system, medical training places are restricted to just 6,000 a year, and Civitas has warned that the rationing of medical places needs to end to meet increasing demand.

Health Researcher Ed Stubbs proposes that the eradication of upfront payments, via bursaries, fifth year tuition fees and clinical placement fees, would mean the current cap on training numbers would be lifted. Under this system students would be required to take out a loan from the Student Loan Company to cover the total cost of their training.

Stubbs also suggests that the repayment of these fees should then be repaid on behalf of each medic by the NHS, but only as long as they work for the NHS after graduating, meaning that those that choose to move to work abroad or work in the private sector would become liable for the repayment of these loans.

He believes that this would encourage more doctors to remain and work for the NHS after graduating and go a long way to solving the recruitment crisis facing the NHS.