Parity at last: a new funding model for undergraduate primary care education in England.

Abstract

Recruitment of medical graduates to general practice is a matter of national concern.1 Medical schools are recognised as critical to this mission,2 particularly given growing evidence to suggest that medical students’ experience of primary care is associated with their likelihood of choosing a GP career.3–5 Provision by medical schools of high-quality undergraduate GP teaching is also vital to the training of future secondary care specialists, who will no doubt in future be working increasingly in community-based and integrated care services. However, until now these important priorities in undergraduate medical education have been hampered by:

chronic underfunding of undergraduate primary care clinical education relative to secondary care;

systemic misunderstanding as to the nature and organisation of undergraduate GP teaching; and

a lack of agency for GP educators with responsibility for leading and delivering undergraduate primary care teaching in medical schools.

On 31 March 2022, the Department of Health and Social Care in England (DHSC) published new education and training tariff guidance6 that finally goes some significant way to address these problems. This is an important and welcome step forward for the following reasons.