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Three Counties Medical School may be forced to train mainly foreign students

A medical school aimed at boosting doctor numbers across Gloucestershire may be forced to mainly accept foreign students due to lack of government funding.

The Department for Health and Social Care is refusing to fund a single place for domestic students at the Three Counties Medical School, reports The Guardian.

This is despite health bosses in the area saying they are spending £70million a year on agency staff to plug a chronic shortage of doctors.

Based at the University of Worcester, the school is due for completion in a few weeks.

NHS Gloucestershire said the school had a "key role" to play in the development of a "sustainable, skilled and knowledgeable local workforce".

It has partly funded the school to allow UK students to start their studies from September. But going forward the school may only be able to give places to those coming in from overseas.

It has been created to boost doctor numbers across Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire - rural areas that struggle to compete with big city training centres when recruiting medical staff.

The school received 1,000 applications from students in the UK and across the world, with international students paying £45,100 a year to support all their own training costs. Self-funding is not allowed for UK students.

The medical school has offered places to 48 students in total, but Professor David Greene, vice chancellor of the University of Worcester, said it could "easily" have secured training placements locally for more than 100 students if the government agreed to pay for them.

He said it's vital that more doctors are trained locally.

"All the evidence is that people tend to stay in the area which they train," he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

"We live in a wonderful part of the country with a very high quality of life.

"But many of our services are threadbare because we can't get the professionals in them to stay and to work."

The school is expected to be completed in about six weeks and has been told by the General Medical Council it can start training doctors from September.

The Department for Health and Social Care, which maintains a strict cap on the number of university medical degree places it funds, has refused to pay for students to come and train at the school.

Instead the university managed to raise enough for 20 UK medical students to start its fast-track four-year graduate medical training. It received a £1 million grant from the Kildare Trust charity and £1.7million in one-off grants from the NHS in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

Dr Andy Seymour, chief medical officer at NHS Gloucestershire, said it was working hard to meet the workforce challenges it face currently and into the future.

He added: "As part of our commitment to attract medical talent to this area, we have been pleased to support the new medical school at the University of Worcester.

"Our aim is to develop a sustainable, skilled and knowledgeable local workforce. We believe that the medical school has a key role to play going forward in achieving that aim and we will be working closely with all relevant partners throughout this year."

A statement from the Department of Health and Social Care said it had funded 1,500 extra medical school places per year since 2017 and created five new medical schools.

It added: "We have commissioned NHS England to develop a long-term plan for the NHS workforce for the next 15 years. This will look at the mix and number of staff required across all parts of the country, including doctors."

Last week Health Education England announced funding had been confirmed for the first 200 Places on its new Medical Doctor Degree Apprenticeship.

The two-year programme aims to provide an alternative route into medicine to deliver a diverse workforce that is more representative of local communities.

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