Expansion of medical school places: focus on retaining doctors instead

In The BMJ’s news story on the delay to expansion of medical school places, Katie Petty-Saphon, chief executive of the Medical Schools Council, indicates that increasing the number of medical students trained in “under-doctored areas” would increase the number of doctors working in these areas.1 Although past studies have shown that doctors tended to practise close to their place of birth or medical school, little research has been conducted on this in recent years despite drastic changes in workforce allocation.2The NHS increasingly allocates jobs at a national level, irrespective of birthplace or medical school location, forcing doctors to move to areas they would otherwise not have chosen to live. This is further compounded by rising competition ratios, which may require doctors to take any job offered to them for fear of otherwise being unemployed.3 The removal of priority foundation programmes, which previously offered financial incentives for posts in under-doctored areas,…