(Press-News.org) Richard Wakeford, Life Fellow at Hughes Hall in the University of Cambridge, warns that the NHS needs more GPs immediately – and that without a complete reorganisation of student recruitment, medical schools "will continue to overproduce graduates inclined to hospital specialties and research."
Workforce reports show that we need at least half of UK medical graduates to become GPs, yet UK medical schools "are not recruiting students with this career inclination in anything like sufficient numbers," he writes.
He points out that Labour has announced plans for 8,000 more general practitioners if elected, while Prime Minister David Cameron has promised seven day access to a GP by 2020 if the Conservatives get in.
Yet available data show that only around 11% of new medical students planned a career in general practice, says Wakeford. Even when they graduate, less than one in four doctors intends to enter general practice training.
So why are medical schools attracting so few would-be GPs?
He reviewed the recruitment websites of all 33 publicly funded UK undergraduate medical schools and found very little information about general practice. He believes the reason could lie within the Medical Schools Council (MSC), the medical schools' representative body.
One of its aims, says Wakeford, is to "explore proactively the role of the doctor in the future and to pursue educational solutions for workforce requirements involving doctors."
Yet out of 33 members representing undergraduate medical schools, just two are GPs. He argues that these people are conflicted, saying "they have responsibilities to deliver appropriate medical graduates to the NHS, and they also have responsibilities (and loyalty) to their own, largely hospital specialist, disciplines and colleges."
How can a representative body comprising only 6% GPs be entrusted to direct undergraduate medical education, and selection into it, when the country needs 50% of doctors to enter general practice, he asks?
He argues that medical schools must act and the MSC's membership requires obliterative change. "This is urgent because of the training time lag. If the NHS is to survive, we need creative recruitment such that at least one in two, not one in eight, new medical students want to become the GPs of the future," he concludes.
INFORMATION:
The systematic neglect of culture is the single biggest barrier to advancing the highest attainable standard of health worldwide, say the authors of a major new report on culture and health, led by Professor David Napier, a leading medical anthropologist from University College London (UCL), UK, and published in The Lancet.
Bringing together experts from many different fields, including anthropologists, social scientists, and medics, the Commission is the first ever detailed appraisal of the role of culture in health. The authors argue that cultures of all kinds – ...
Glioma is a common name for serious brain tumours. Different types of glioma are usually diagnosed as separate diseases and have been considered to arise from different cell types in the brain. Now researchers at Uppsala University, together with American colleagues, have shown that one and the same cell of origin can give rise to different types of glioma. This is important for the basic understanding of how these tumours are formed and can contribute to the development of more efficient and specific glioma therapies. The results have been published in Journal of Neuroscience.
The ...
AMHERST, Mass. – Binge drinking can have lasting effects on brain pathways that are still developing during adolescence, say neuroscience researcher Heather N. Richardson and her colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Louisiana State University. Results of their study using a rodent model of adolescent drinking appear in the October 29 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
Richardson says, "Adverse effects of this physical damage can persist long after adolescent drinking ends. We found that the effects of alcohol are enduring." She adds, "The ...
WASHINGTON, DC — Heavy drinking during adolescence may lead to structural changes in the brain and memory deficits that persist into adulthood, according to an animal study published October 29 in The Journal of Neuroscience. The study found that, even as adults, rats given daily access to alcohol during adolescence had reduced levels of myelin — the fatty coating on nerve fibers that accelerates the transmission of electrical signals between neurons. These changes were observed in a brain region important in reasoning and decision-making. Animals that were ...
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has spied a new crater on the lunar surface; one made from the impact of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission.
"The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team recently developed a new computer tool to search Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) before and after image pairs for new craters, the LADEE impact event provided a fun test, said Mark Robinson, LROC principal investigator from Arizona State University in Tempe. "As it turns there were several small surface changes found in the predicted ...
How does a normal cellular process derail and become unhealthy?
A multi-institutional, international team led by Virginia Tech researchers studied cells found in breast and other types of connective tissue and discovered new information about cell transitions that take place during wound healing and cancer.
The results were published in a September issue of the journal Science Signaling.
During development, cells change forms and regroup from tight packs of epithelial cells to more mobile, loose arrays of mesenchymal cells.
The cell changes, known as an epithelial ...
Montreal, October 28, 2014 – The Montreal Heart Institute Research Centre is once again pushing the limits of knowledge in personalized medicine. A meta-analysis combining the results of several pharmacogenomic studies and involving over 40,000 research subjects now makes it possible to demonstrate a different response to statins according to the patient's gene profile. This important contribution of two Montreal researchers from the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI), Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif, Director of the Research Centre and Dr. Marie-Pierre Dubé, Director of ...
Fewer women than men are treated with dialysis for end-stage kidney disease, according to a new comprehensive analysis of sex-specific differences in treatment published this week in PLOS Medicine. The results of the study, conducted by Manfred Hecking with Friedrich Port and colleagues from Arbor Research Collaborative for Health in Ann Arbor, Michigan, suggest that these findings call for further detailed study for the reasons underlying the sex-specific differences in end-stage renal disease treatment.
Chronic kidney disease often progresses to end-stage renal disease, ...
SAN FRANCISCO: A simple intervention designed to raise awareness about the use of communication devices while driving reduced the incidence of distracted driving by 50 percent in hospital personnel, according to findings from a single site study presented today at the 2014 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons.
Driving distracted–caused by any activity that steals a driver's attention from the road–is at an all-time high. In 2012, an estimated 421,000 people were injured in accidents involving distracted driving and 3,328 were killed as a result ...
A population of endangered giant tortoises, which once dwindled to just over a dozen, has recovered on the Galapagos island of Española, a finding described as "a true story of success and hope in conservation" by the lead author of a study published today (Oct. 28).
Some 40 years after the first captive-bred tortoises were reintroduced to the island by the Galapagos National Park Service, the endemic Española giant tortoises are reproducing and restoring some of the ecological damage caused by feral goats that were brought to the island in the late 19th century. ...
