Expansion of medical school places: focus on retaining doctors instead

In The BMJ’s news story on the delay to expansion of medical school places, Katie Petty-Saphon, chief executive of the Medical Schools Council, indicates that increasing the number of medical students trained in “under-doctored areas” would increase the number of doctors working in these areas.1 Although past studies have shown that doctors tended to practise close to their place of birth or medical school, little research has been conducted on this in recent years despite drastic changes in workforce allocation.2