Scheme tackles medic shortage

Melanie Thornton is swapping retail for medicine

More doctors are to be trained in Wales in the hope of tackling the shortage of medics.

A new fast track graduate four-year course is being launched in south Wales.

The clinical school at Swansea University is being expanded to allow more student places to be available.

It is a collaboration between Swansea University, Swansea NHS Trust and the Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff University.

The establishment of the scheme increases the number of medical students in Wales bringing the total number annually to 360.

Based on Cardiff's five-year course in medicine, students must already be graduates with a 2:1 or first class honours degree in any field.

The Welsh Assembly Government has invested £9m in the Swansea Clinical School, which opened in November 2001 in response to the shortage of doctors in Wales.

I came to realise that although I really enjoyed retail, medicine is what I wanted to do Melanie Thornton

Currently there are around 78 consultant posts and 86 GP jobs vacant in the country.

Students who pass the four-year graduate entry programme will receive a Cardiff University degree, but there is no guarantee they will eventually decide to practise in Wales.

The assembly has said it is committed to expanding the numbers of medical students educated in Wales.

The annual intake in Cardiff has already increased by 100 to 290.

It will be a unique medical educational development for Wales compressing the traditional five year programme of study into four years and producing qualified doctors for the NHS more quickly than has been possible in the past.

The overall aim of the scheme is to ensure Wales can boast a medical education and research network that is second to none.

In Canada and the US fast track courses have been running for years.

Graduate

One of the new intake, Melanie Thornton, had harboured an ambition to study medicine whilst a teenager.

She told BBC Radio Wales: "I wanted to be a doctor when I was much, much younger, but when I was 17 it was a very big decision to make.

"I didn't really feel brave enough to take such a big decision at that stage so I went off and did a degree in geography in Swansea."

After university, she joined the graduate trainee programme at a Tesco supermarket in Surrey after working for the company part-time as a student.

"I came to realise that although I really enjoyed retail, medicine is what I wanted to do," she said.

"It's a faster course so I have been doing a lot of studying in the time before I applied and I had to pass an exam as part of my application.

"It's a big challenge but I'm looking forward to learning all this new stuff."