The PCSO equivalent of the NHS?
A bit like in the Territorial Army, we were trained soldiers within months.
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Itâs not a bad idea. I was offered a place at medical school in 1959 on the basis of my nursing qualification, and took it up, but was stymied by having no financial means to support it.
I worked part time in a timber yard to keep body and soul together while studying full time, and developed malnutrition and exhaustion, so had to quit after a year.
Nursing is an excellent grounding for medicine, combining hands-on practical work in medicine and surgery, with more or less the same theoretical grounding too.
Doctors rely very heavily on nurses during their training, and learn from them in the wards. They often marry nurses. I know many male nurses with women doctor wives!
Bring it on, it will benefit the profession and the public IMO.
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I donât think that they will get many potential candidates to be honest. One other suggestion is that pharmacists could retrain as doctors that I think could work
Re the PCSO reference PCSOS arenât trained to the same level as Police Officers and itâs a different role .Any existing health professional that converts to medicine will have to pass the same exams as a student who has just studied medicine would
But I thought they were short of nurses too? Converting the best nurses into doctors seems to merely shift the problem a notch down the scale, no?
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Thatâs what has been said on Twitter,there is a greater shortage of nurses than doctors ,why encourage more to leave ?
Might be the first step towards reduction in standards? Before you all howl at me, I am in no way suggesting that nurses or pharmacists couldnât become doctors in a shorter time than a 18 year old student.
However UK trained doctors do have a very good reputation worldwide, partly as a result of their training. And I am suspicious that this could open pandoraâs box and start to open the door to unwanted consequences.
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quote=âAnna, post:5, topic:28919â]
Converting the best nurses into doctors seems to merely shift the problem a notch down the scale, no?
[/quote]
No.
Nurses are not âlower in the scaleâ except in the mind of many sections of the media, and of the general public.
Nurses are not in any way subordinate to their medical colleagues. These are complementary professions.
And nurses donât need encouragement to leave the profession. They are grievously underpaid, lack proper recognition and status for the hugely skilled work they do, and disgracefully overworked.
Of course, as women, they understand that this is their lot, but we love them, donât we guys, especially those with big boobs? 
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I find it ironic that those elderly âbrexiteersâ who voted leave purely because of immigrant issues and who are imminently more in need of a good standard of health care from doctors and nurses, will be among the first to suffer (younger leave voters too, but moreso in a few years down the road)
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot 
âŚâŚâŚâŚâŚand who is going to tend to that, I wonder? 
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I donât know a one of my nurse friends/ acquaintances who have expressed a wish to train as a doctor or expressed remorse that they didnât. A lot of the nurses who would be most suitable (for want of a better expression) for this kind of conversion have already done further training and become Nurse practioners, Advanced practioners etc. They are trained,well paid, have professional kudos ,they are not going to start again from practically scratch
Itâs happening in France. TF1 news had an item from central France where nurses are going out to patients and dealing with them instead of doctors, due to the shortage of same.
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My mother was a nurse of 30 years, and loved every minute of it. It was for her a form of devotion and i cannot imagine her retraining to be a doctor. In fact most of the sisters and matrons of the day were actually better qualified than some doctors, they had the practical and the theoretical skills most doctors (even today) dont have. They were and are invaluable members of society who like one poster put, overworked, underpaid and generally flogged like the preverbial horse.
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Dont you mean trained gophers, but never soldiers. That takes more than a few months.
Yep. Trained gophers. I passed out at the passing out parade.
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âThis includes 5,500 hours of training and a minimum of five years to become a doctor.â
More fake news from the Tories I suspect. Graduate entry medicine in Ireland is a four year course. 
Absolutely the case, and the poster was me. I donât regret the choice I made to nurse and I practised for over 50 years, the last twenty years hands-on.
But some nurses develop a vocation for practicing as doctors, and they should not be held back from doing so by prejudice.
For several years now all trained nurses do a degree course to qualify, usually a BSc.
Itâs increasingly common for nurses on the wards to hold a Masterâs, and PhDs are by no means a rarity these days.
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Lots of Male nurses Peter Goble. Also I would like to point out to everyone following this post, that Nurses are included on the Australian Medical Register and get the same respect! Some Nurses are more qualified as Doctors especial ones in Special Care Units who make decisions to avoid disturbing the Doctors getting a decent sleep.
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We had a Queenâs Nurse in our group practice in Minchinhampton.
She wanted to stay on the front line so she had responsibility for the triage for the practice, ran the asthma and diabetes clinics and was able to prescribe.
It worked extremely well. She knew that I was able to control my asthma very well and when I rang for help it was always there.
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