Abstract: The UK healthcare system is delivered with primary care at its heart, but despite this auspicious role in the NHS, recruitment and retention into the general practice profession in the last decade has been difficult. There are strong policy drivers to facilitate recruitment into general practice: Health Education England (HEE) have mandated that 50% of all new medical graduates enter general practice;1 the new General Medical Council’s Outcomes for Graduates has provided additional primary care and population health requirements;2 and league tables revealing which medical schools are ‘the best’ in recruiting their graduates to the GP profession are now published.3
However, despite this political noise, there is still a recruitment and retention crisis in the profession, with 39% of GPs indicating a high likelihood of leaving direct patient care in the next 5 years, with this rising to 62% in GPs aged >50 years.4 This is on a wider background of retention challenges in the profession generally, with only 47% of newly qualified doctors exiting the Foundation Programme entering any kind of speciality training.3
In 2016, a critical moment arose where HEE and the Medical Schools Council supported a collaborative task force to expose and explore the role medical schools should have in addressing the crisis in the profession. The By Choice not Chance report chaired by Professor Val Wass, now widely referred to as the ‘ Wass report’, published a series of recommendations giving medical schools guidance and strategies to enable recruitment of their graduates into general practice.5 This report arose from discussions with a series of educators: the British Medical Association; the RCGP; the Society for Academic Primary Care; trainees; undergraduate Deans; and students from medical …