British Government says GP training places safe

A firm reassurance that training places for future GPs will be resourced was given today (22/09/04) by English Health Minister John Hutton speaking at a GP Recruitment conference at the BMA.

GP Registrars are qualified doctors undertaking specialised training to become GPs. Doctors are concerned at the effects on training of a £50million loss to the training budget.

Answering questions at the Recruitment to General Practice conference held at the BMA today (22/09/04) John Hutton said he had no indication that the number of GP Registrars could not be expanded as planned, but he would not hesitate to step in if necessary. "It is definitely not part of our agenda to cut back on the number of GP registrars" he said.

Morecambe Bay GP, Dr David Wrigley, reported that plans to let every doctor in training get first hand experience of general practice seemed to be threatened by funding shortfalls. The Minister responded saying "The ambition we started with in terms of Modernising Medical Careers remains, that is for every doctor going into the post-graduate stage of training to have experience of general practice. We have not given up. We will put resources that are needed into the training budget to make sure we give people that opportunity."

Mr Hutton urged doctors to be proud of their profession ? a job he would choose to do himself if he had his life all over again. He reminded them that GPs commanded the respect of 98% of the population. The focus of the NHS would be on primary care in the next four years. "We have the largest number of GPs ever?..Is it enough? Obviously not. We need significantly more GPs working in primary care and we are doing everything we can to support that."

Mr James Johnson, chairman of the BMA, told the conference that recruitment to general practice had been neglected with the emphasis on increasing the number of hospital doctors. "It is time to redress the balance" he said. Today's conference was part of the contribution towards recruiting more doctors into general practice.