A significant proportion of medical students have considered leaving their studies because of insufficient funding.
Insufficient funding for medical students is causing difficulties for too many students. A BMA survey of medical students shows that 43% have considered leaving or pausing their course due to financial pressures.
Aside from the growing number of students who have approached hardship funds and are using food banks, nearly three-quarters have asked their parents or family for additional financial support and over two-fifths have used their overdraft to cover living costs.
The survey reveals that for students in receipt of reduced student finance maintenance and the NHS bursary, nine out of ten felt that funding available to them doesn’t cover their living costs.
“It is ludicrous, that at a time when the government is committed to getting the NHS back on its feet and ensuring there is a strong medical workforce to care for patients, medical students that have worked hard to earn a place on their course are being met with these difficult financial barriers,” said BMA’s medical student’s deputy co-chairs Henry Budden and Sophie Mitchell.
Limits career options
The BMA is concerned that a failure to address the funding gap limits career options and is a serious barrier to widening participation in medicine. It believes that the fear of financial hardship will be a deterrent for those students who do not have other sources of financial support.
A clear message from the survey is that those students who have previously received free school meals are more likely to report their finances as extremely detrimental to overall educational attainment and academic performance.
BMA is calling on the British government to address the drop in funding faced by medical students by ensuring they have access to full student finance maintenance for the entirety of their course. It estimates that the cost to the treasury would be £24 million which makes up 0.12% of Student Finance annual lending.
“By ensuring that medical students can retain their entitlement to full student finance maintenance funding throughout the entirety of their studies, the government can drastically improve the financial outlook for many concerned students in England today,” said Budden and Mitchell.
