General Practitioners: Recruitment

(asked on 20th July 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to increase the level of recruitment of GPs across England and Wales; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Alistair Burt Portrait
Alistair Burt
This question was answered on 7th September 2015

Health services are a devolved matter with each United Kingdom country responsible for ensuring they have a workforce that is equipped to deliver high quality patient care.

In January 2015, Health Education England (HEE), alongside NHS England, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee jointly published Building the Workforce – the new deal for general practice which set out an action plan to increase general practitioner (GP) numbers. This includes measures on recruitment to GP training:

- conducting a campaign this summer targeted at recruitment to GP training in the autumn;

- scoping the use of an additional year of training post-award of the Certificate of Completion of Training for candidates seeking to work in geographies which historically have had difficulties recruiting trainees;

- investing an extra £1 billion in new primary care infrastructure which will enable increased training capacity and a more positive experience for medical students and foundation year doctors within general practice; and

- establishing a number of hubs/networks providing new education and training models for the whole workforce within community and primary care settings.

Alongside this, the Government’s mandate to HEE requires them to ensure that 3,250 trainee doctors enter GP training programmes by 2016. This will enable further increases in the GP workforce across England.

Building the Workforce also includes measures on retention and supporting GPs to return to practice. A copy of this is attached.

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