What assessment has the Welsh Government made of whether medical school numbers will meet forecasted patient demand in five, 10 and 15 years?
As part of the commitment to support a new medical school in North Wales there has been collaborative work between medical schools, HEIW and Welsh Government in 2022 to explore medical student requirements for Wales now and in the future. This work resulted in recommendations, including the optimum number of medical student places that Wales requires per year to meet the medical component for delivery of healthcare in Wales.
The process for estimating the number of medical students required to meet future demand has been reviewed in recent years by both the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and the Medical Schools Council (MSC). The reviews reached the conclusion that the numbers of medical student places in the UK need to be increased to ensure the gap between supply and demand in the future does not widen further.
The reviews identified that placement capacity and supporting infrastructure (facilities and educators) is already a significant challenge. It is therefore important that any recommendations or changes do not have a detrimental impact on the quality of training at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
This work concluded the optimum target for the medium term in Wales should be a total of 500 to 600 training places per year. Once the North Wales Medical School is at optimum capacity our numbers are estimated to be approximately 590 per year.