By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

STRAIGHT-A students are being turned away from Dundee University’s Medical School when there is a shortage of doctors across the country.

The university was swamped with 1900 applications for just 140 places for the next intake of medical students in September.

But yesterday the university said they had no control over the numbers of doctors in training and they were allocated funding for a specific number of places stipulated by the Government.

“We get people who apply who have got five As and are captain of the school football team and the debating team and don’t get in,” said a spokesman for the university.

“Medicine is one of the most in-demand subjects and we have got one of the top-rated medical schools in the country.”

Dundee University Medical School is consistently in the top 10 of medical schools across the country when league tables are published.

The need for more trained doctors was identified in a Scottish Executive-commissioned report published a year ago that stated Scottish medical schools should train an extra 100 students a year to meet demand for doctors.

But the Executive has yet to respond formally to that report.

Dundee University is in no doubt it is turning away students with the potential to be doctors.

Failure to offer a place is not down to ability and aptitude but severe limitation on funded places for medical students.

“In terms of how many doctors we can train, we are bound by the decisions of other authorities, such as the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council,” said the spokesman.

“They only have money for a certain number of places so we are restricted as to how many students we can take.

“We can only train as many as we are told we can train and there is nothing we can do about that. We are massively over applied to.”

Training medical students is more costly than any other university course. Adding an extra 100 students a year would add millions to the budget.

A Scottish Executive spokesman said, “Staff numbers in the NHS are currently running at record levels and this also applies to doctors in training.

“However, we are aware that more work needs to be done on the recruitment and retention of staff and that is why we are currently developing the National Workforce Plan which will ensure the right numbers of staff with the right skills are in the right places.”