For nearly fifty years, general practice taught medical students at a discount. By the 2010s, GP placements made up around 15 per cent of clinical teaching but received only about 7 per cent of the funding. Teaching practices were withdrawing. Placements were shrinking. And all the while, government policy depended on half of medical graduates choosing general practice as a career.
In 2022, that changed. The harmonised education tariff funded GP teaching on a par with hospital teaching for the first time.
Now, the first study of the tariff’s impact – led by researchers at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford – finds it has delivered: more placements, stronger teaching teams, better-supported GP tutors, and practices that no longer say they cannot afford to teach.
The findings, published in BMC Medical Education, arrive as Parliament scrutinises the Health Bill, which will abolish NHS England and transfer its functions – including oversight of education funding – to the Department of Health and Social Care. The study sets out what needs to survive that transition.
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.