This week I was delighted to hear the announcement of a new medical school in Lancashire, located at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk. Five new medical schools are being created across the country, as part of an expansion in the number of medical training places in England.
The new schools are all located in areas of the country that have struggled to attract doctors. Edge Hill University will offer an Access to Medicine course from 2019 and train doctors from 2020, opening the door for many more students from Pendle to pursue a career in the NHS.
This is just the latest good news for Lancastrians interested in a medical career. In December I visited the University of Central Lancashire’s (UCLAN) School of Medicine to hear about the expansion of their medical courses to local students, a step made possible when the cap on student numbers was scrapped. UCLAN aim to offer even more training places to students from Lancashire this year.
Nationally, we will see thousands more medical students trained up over the next few years. There will be 1,500 more places for medical students by 2020, up 25% on the current number of placements. These extra training places mean that 7,500 home-grown doctors should graduate each year. Currently, the NHS relies on hiring medical professionals trained in other countries.
This follows the great news earlier this month that Burnley General Hospital has been given the green light for a major £15.6 million development. The hospital will have new, state-of-the-art ophthalmology, maxillo facial and outpatient facilities which will greatly benefit patients from Pendle. This is the latest phase of a £60 million investment into the development of Burnley Hospital. The new facilities will open in autumn 2019 and I am delighted to have helped the team at the Hospital secure the funding they need to transform the care they can offer.
Finally, on Wednesday there was good news for NHS staff when the government and unions agreed a pay increase for more than one million NHS workers, including nurses and paramedics. NHS staff in our area do an amazing job and I thank them all for dedicating their lives to helping others.