A PROFESSIONAL involved in the training of medical students across the Western Trust said Fermanagh is now “missing out on good doctors” as students are being put off studying at the SWAH due to the threat to its services.
The professional, whose identity the Herald is protecting, was speaking at a meeting regarding the threat to emergency surgery at the SWAH, held at Fermanagh House on Monday.
They said the medical training at the Western Trust was the best in the North, with trainees coming from Queen’s University, the Royal College, and the new medical school in Derry. However, they said they had found recently students no longer wanted to come to the SWAH, which has a great reputation as a training hospital.
“By cutting off surgical services in the SWAH, the students that really wanted to come back for fifth year because they know they get such good teaching are now saying, why would we come back here to start our training when there services aren’t going to be there,” they said.
They added many of these students were local, “These are people from Tyrone and Fermanagh. We have lost them.
“This is the kind of thing we’re up against. We are going to lose very good doctors because they will not get the training here.
“If you’ve got good students, you give them good teaching, they will automatically give good teaching back and hold to where they got good teaching, and they will live there. Because there is a good standard of life around here, and we’re losing it.”
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