It has been reported that 791 medical graduates could be denied the chance to train as doctors in the NHS this year, despite the health service’s crippling shortage of medics.

The medical undergraduates who have applied to start training as junior doctors at the start of August have been told there are no places for them.

Pressure is growing for action to close the gap between the number of training places available across the NHS and the number of graduates seeking one, so medical talent is not wasted and hospitals hire as many fresh recruits as they can to help tackle the widespread lack of medics.

The most recent official figures showed that the NHS in England is short of almost 8,200 doctors. Doctors are concerned that the mismatch between demand for and supply of training places will lead to the NHS missing out on medics it sorely needs and that some of those denied a place will either go to work abroad instead or give up medicine altogether.

Half of the 791 will soon graduate from UK medical schools while the other half are ‘eligibility applicants’, which means that they have a medical degree from an overseas medical school and are entitled to work in the UK or have graduated from a British medical school before August 2020.

Foundation one training usually starts in the August after graduation. The UK Foundation Programme has warned that the foundation programme is ‘over-subscribed’ to a record level this year, raising the prospect that some of the 791 may not be allocated a training slot. While it has already filled 8,209 foundation training places, the 791 who have missed out so far have been put on a reserve list.

The 791 is the largest number of applicants on record that the UKFPO has not placed by this stage of the year. In 2017 only 25 graduates were in that position, though that number has risen sharply in recent years and by last year had risen to 494.