Helen Salisbury: How will medical apprenticeships work?

You may picture an “apprentice” as a young lad (the word has yet to shake off its gendered past), all thumbs and acne, following the master craftsman around and—in return for a lot of fetching and carrying and a very modest wage—gradually learning his skills. When I was a student we still had the remnants of an apprenticeship model of learning in medicine: it involved long attachments to a single consultant’s “firm,” working as part of their team and gradually taking on responsibility. Its success was a bit hit and miss, depending on the firm, and we worked for no pay, although we did have a student grant to live on.NHS England’s Long Term Workforce Plan,1 published in June, set out a goal of starting medical degree apprenticeships, with pilot sites recruiting next year.2 I’ve been trying to get my head around how these schemes might work—not least because, as…
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