News item | 13-06-2023 | 4:30 pm
In order to meet the future demand for care, the government is increasing the number of training places for several care courses, such as for general practitioners and mental health psychologists. The government also wants to train more dentists. In addition, training places for medical specialists will be better distributed across the various regions in the future. This is what the ministers Kuipers (Public Health, Welfare and Sport), Helder (Long-term Care and Sport) and Dijkgraaf (Education, Culture and Science) wrote in response to advice from the Capacity Body on the inflow into care training.
The demand for care will continue to grow in the coming years. It is important that sufficient healthcare workers are trained to meet the increasing demand for healthcare as effectively as possible. Every year, VWS determines the number of available training places for (medical) further education. The basis for this is the advice of the Capacity Body: the Capacity Plan. The new Capacity Plan provides the basis for the number of places for 2024, 2025 and 2026. An increase is recommended for most programs for which the Capacity Plan contains intake advice. The Cabinet follows the recommendations of the Capacity Plan as much as possible.
More doctors needed
In order to continue to provide sufficient, high-quality care in the future, major changes must take place in the care sector. To achieve this, strengthening of primary care is necessary. An important part of this is the training of additional GPs. The ACMMP therefore recommends a further substantial increase in the intake in general practitioner training. The number of places will be scaled up to 954 places in 2024. That is 84 more than the current number of 870. In 2025 this will be 984 places and in 2026 it will be scaled up to 1035.
Regional distribution of specialist medical training
From 2024, the distribution of the new intake places for specialist medical training will be more in line with the size of the population and thus the demand for care per region. From then on, the distribution key will be the patient population served by a hospital of all hospitals in a region, with equal weight given to teaching hospitals and non-teaching hospitals. This should ultimately lead to a more balanced distribution of training places across the country.
Fewer training places in medicine
At the moment there is a so-called training pool of basic doctors who are not (yet) in training, but who do want to follow further medical training. This concerns more than 7,500 or 29% of the total number of general practitioners. The size of the training pool has risen sharply over time and is also growing faster than the number of available training places. The reason for this growth is not clear. The cabinet is asking the Ability Body to investigate this. In order to better align the number of medical training places with the advice of the Capacity Body, the number of places will be reduced from 3050 places to 3015 places from academic year 2024-2025. This leaves enough room to respond to fluctuations in the number of training places in further education, but a further increase in the training pool and the long waiting time for obtaining a place in further education is cushioned.
Increasing intake in dentistry
The cabinet is concerned about the increasing shortage of dentists in some regions. In addition, many dentists are expected to retire in the next 10 years. In order to combat the shortage, the annual intake for dentistry training will be increased in due course. This ranges from 259 to at least 345 training places. To make this increase financially possible, the government believes it is possible to shorten the program from 6 to 5 years in a responsible manner, with graduates still meeting the applicable training requirements. This ensures that the training per place becomes less expensive and therefore more students can be trained for the same money. In the long term, the cabinet also wants to increase the number of training places in dentistry by using the money that will become available due to the limited reduction in the intake in medicine.
The cabinet also wants to take a good look at what is needed to achieve a balanced distribution of dentists across the country – and whether spreading dental training can contribute to this. The regions where the density of dentists is the lowest – such as Zeeland – have the highest priority.
GZ psychologists
The training to become a health care psychologist (GZ psychologist) deserves separate attention. 965 training places will be made available at the GZ psychologist by 2024. This is a growth of 16% compared to the number of training places for 2023. In recent years, substantial additional investments have already been made in training GZ psychologists: the number of employed GZ psychologists psychologists has increased by 13% in recent years. And in the coming years, more and more GZ psychologists will enter the labor market because more GZ psychologists have started training in recent years.