What is the point of sinking into thousands of pounds of debt to study medicine only to find a career does not exist for you?
Emerging from a gruelling medical degree to find the number of specialty posts have not kept pace with the increase in student numbers must be disheartening for aspiring doctors.
Before medical schools are expanded any further, the BMA has asked the Government to take several measures. It wants it to ensure the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026 remains effective as a way to reduce competition ratios.
It wants it to give a permanent guarantee that all UK graduates will be offered a foundation programme post and not be allocated a placeholder. And it wants to expand core and specialty training with the equivalent post-certificate of completion of training employment to ensure all UK medical graduates have a reasonable chance of becoming GPs and consultants.
Fatima Ahmed, a Merseyside foundation year 1, agrees. Addressing the BMA annual representative meeting this year, she said: ‘Nine thousand five hundred medical school places are filled every year. Competition ratios are at an all-time high. We cannot keep recruiting thousands into spending the better part of the decade, accruing tens of thousands of pounds of debt, only to abandon them to a gig economy after foundation year 2.
‘That's not a pipeline. It's a trap. I do not think that the expansion of medical school places is sustainable without a sustained, simultaneous increase in training posts. We have competition ratios that essentially mean, when you apply for a job, there can be anywhere from five up to 20 people applying for that same job.
‘My university is just one of many that has increasingly begun to deliver medical teaching online. Rather than spending time in lecture theatres, in dissection rooms, and in group teaching, with experienced lecturers and teachers, we learn online remotely, off laptops, off our phones.’
The BMA believes it is a UK-wide issue and is highlighting the problems medical students, alongside the educator workforce, faces.
In England, it wrote to health minister Karin Smyth during the summer to demand a pause in medical school expansion and in Scotland it has run a national survey of more than 500 medical students across Scottish medical schools at all stages of training. In March 2026 it published its report, Beyond Capacity: The Impact of Increased Medical Student Intake in Scotland.
The association also wants: greater funding to reverse the decline in tenured medical academic posts; establish pathways for the development of the future professional educator workforce; and address financial incentives associated with this career path to ensure demand for high-quality medical educators meets supply.
The BMA believes placement providers and medical schools should monitor the situation and act where standards are not met. This should include showing where funding for undergraduate education is spent.
Doctors leaders have been informed about growing class sizes, which threaten to affect the quality of teaching. Adding to this is a stall in the number of medical academics employed, which has remained static for around two decades, according to national data.
Chris Patterson is production editor of The Doctor