Student doctors are taking on part-time jobs or dropping out entirely due to burnout caused by long hours and a lack of funding in their final years, campaigners warned.
Third year medical student Jessie LaCourse, 22, can't see herself working in anything other than medicine, saying she "would love to be that person who is making a massive change by saving people's lives". But the cost of pursuing a degree has weighed on her mind since before she started at the University of Liverpool. Although Jessie is receiving £11,000 in finance for this year, medical students in their fifth and sixth years can claim a maximum of £6,458 a year in student loans and the NHS bursary. This is despite having to work 40-hour-per-week work placements for free.
Jessie, from Mossley Hill, said: "The whole financial situation is incredibly stressful. My travel bursary is £100 to cover the year, but obviously that isn't going to cover anything. That covered about 10 days of travel to [placement in] Chester. People who don't have any other kind of financial income are completely reliant on their maintenance loan, like me. It can be really stressful because you spend an incredible amount of time having to budget very carefully."
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The Calderstones School graduate is part of the #LiveableNHSBurary campaign, which is backed by the Doctors' Association UK and the British Medical Association. It's calling for full maintenance loans for medical students for the duration of their degree programme in line with other healthcare professional students, like midwives, nurses and occupational therapists, and for a review of travel and accommodation expenses to reflect the soaring cost of living. They're also calling for the NHS bursary, part of which is means tested, to be replaced with access to the NHS Learning Support Fund, which other healthcare professional students also have access to.
Backing the campaign, Khadija Meghrawi, co-chair of the British Medical Association medical students committee, said: "It is deeply worrying that students are facing financial hardship because the support they are given during their degree is not enough to pay for their basic needs. This is a failure from the Government to provide enough funding. For years, we've heard instances of our fellow students using food banks, overburdened by debt and exhausted by working long hours alongside studying for a medicine degree full-time. No student should have to choose between completing their degree and making ends meet."
Jessie has had to look for weekend work and sacrifice the social side of her student experience so she can afford to continue travelling to Chester for placement before going home to revise for another three or four hours. She can move back in with her parents while staying at university if the cost of her final two years proves too much, but many student doctors don't have this choice. Jessie worries this will "lead to less doctors from a diverse background", making medical staff less relatable to patients.
She said: "They're having to work a job alongside the 40 hours of unpaid placement that they do every single week, and their revision as well. That is just completely burning people out. If you've got student doctors who are so burnt out and exhausted before they've even graduated, you're going to have a bunch of doctors coming into the workforce who are already exhausted and not ready to go, because they just want a break."
Even Jessie has wondered whether she'll cope with the stress, saying, "there's a point where you're like, 'I don't want to do it anymore, it's too much', but you do carry on". She added: "I just have to remind myself that it'll 100% be worth it and it's for a good cause. Having to put in all this effort means that in the future, I can help other people and help people get better when they might not have."
Hardship grants are available to medical students, and NHS bursaries do not need to be repaid like a regular student loan, according to the Department of Health and Social Care. A spokesperson said: "We are committed to supporting medical students in England across all years of study and we are keeping funding arrangements for all healthcare students under review."
