North Wales Conservative Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has today backed a motion calling “for the development of a Medical School in Bangor as part of an all-Wales approach to increasing training, recruitment and retention of doctors in Wales”.
Mr Isherwood has long been calling on the Welsh Government to take action to tackle the GP shortage facing North Wales and expressing concern in the Assembly Chamber over GP practice closures in North Wales.
In this afternoon’s Assembly Opposition Debate on the recruitment of medical staff in Wales, Mr Isherwood also moved an Amendment calling on the Welsh Government “to work with health and education institutions on both sides of the border to build a more in-depth and wide-ranging north Wales medical programme”.
Speaking in the Debate, he said:
“As the Royal College of Physicians states: ‘Recruitment problems are threatening the existence of many hospitals and general practices in Wales. We need to train more doctors and nurses in Wales with the aim of retaining them to work here’.
“But a third of core medical training places in Wales were unfilled in 2016. This figure rises to over 50% in Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board Hospitals.
“As the head of Bangor University’s School of Medical Sciences said last week “Wales must expand medical schools to deal with future shortages of doctors, particularly GPs. Relatively few extra academic staff would be needed and Bangor University is in an ideal position to foster and recruit students from rural Wales and Welsh-speaking communities”.
Mr Isherwood added: “As I said here two weeks ago ‘It’s many years since I first discussed the need for a Bangor Medical School with its previous Vice-Chancellor’ “.
“It’s three years since the North Wales Local Medical Committee warned, at a meeting in the Assembly, that General Practice in North Wales was facing crisis, unable to fill vacancies, with GPs considering retirement.
“And they expressed concern that the previous supply from Liverpool Medical School, where their generation of GPs had primarily come from, had largely been severed.
“I therefore asked the First Minister to ensure that the business case for a new Medical School in Bangor includes dialogue with Liverpool, to ensure that we keep local medics local.
“Responding to the Royal College of General Practitioners Wales ‘Put Patients First: Back General Practice’ Campaign during the last Assembly, I met a group of GPs in North Wales, whose key concern was recruitment, where the average age of GPs in North Wales was over 50, but they couldn’t get medical students to come and train in North Wales.
“Delivering sustainability will require the training, recruitment and retention of doctors locally, and this will require the Universities, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and Merseyside to work together and build a more in depth and wide ranging North Wales medical programme with specialisms being delivered by the relevant major hospitals on both sides of the border.
“According to the BMA, 2014 figures showed that Wales had the lowest number of GPs per 1000 people in the UK. However, as usual, Labour Welsh Government rejected all warnings until crisis was upon us, and then quoted selective percentages to mask the reality that they were doing too little, too late.”