Medical Education and Training in North Wales

Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:28 pm on 11 July 2018.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:28, 11 July 2018

Thank you for the questions. I think it's a useful point about distinguishing between the medical degree and then speciality training post medical degree. Of course, there are ongoing conversations with colleagues in the north-west deanery in England about how we might arrange different courses of study, as well as what we can do within Wales as well. I want there to be a practical conversation that is led by actually making a difference for the quality of training and the scope of training that can be provided, as opposed to an England-versus-Wales conversation. There will, of course, be times when politicians disagree, but this is actually about training doctors to give them a career within our national health service, serving our communities.

On the point on the medical degree and the practical choice about places and mone, they are practical choices about our ability to expand, if we want to fund that expansion, because, as I say, you can't do that on a limited agreement over two or three years, because the degree takes longer and it would be a pretty unusual thing if we decided to expand a degree course of study for one cohort and then at the end of that we would withdraw the funding. There would be no way to plan and properly expand the numbers we would want to see within our medical workforce. It won't take away our need to continue to recruit from within the nations of the UK as well as outside the UK, in Europe and further afield, but this is us making a practical choice with the resource we have to make a difference in the area that we can make with our current two medical schools, to deliver against some of the challenges in different parts of the country.

That will also be the case for speciality training as well, because, every year, we look at our speciality training numbers and we need to understand how and where we fill those places. So, actually, that is even more important in terms of the links with the rest of Wales and, indeed, the deanery across our border where different training places are available for those speciality places. So, we have some of the same challenges as the rest of the United Kingdom and some rather more unique ones. This is part of the answer, as opposed to a silver bullet for all the challenges that you and I will continue to discuss now and in the future.