Medical students need a "generous bank manager"

Dan Atkinson, chairman of the BMA's medical students committee, said: "For most students good A-levels aren't just all you need - make sure you have a generous bank manager, too.

"Medicine is in real danger of becoming the domain of the privileged. Doctors need to be recruited from the widest possible base in society and not merely from those most well-off."

Massive debt

Mr Atkinson, a fifth year student at Southampton General Hospital, has a debt of �16,000 himself.

He blamed the debt on having to travel to hospitals as far away as Bath and Chichester for his studies.

Mr Atkinson warned successful A-level students embarking on a career in medicine: "The hard work of the last two years has paid off - it may take years before your future debts are."

'It will get worse'

Zoe Silverstone, also a member of the BMA medical students' committee who is training at Manchester's Hope Hospital, said trainee doctors' debts would get considerably worse when they were faced with paying tuition fees from this September.

The BMA has estimated that debts could soar to �25,000 under the new arrangements when trainee doctors will have to pay �1,000-a-year towards tuition fees for four years of their five-year training period.

Ms Silverstone said medical students had no time to earn extra money because they worked long hours and had short holidays.

They also faced additional expenses because text books were very expensive, and they had to buy smart clothes to work in hospital.

Medicine becoming elist

She said that contrary to popular opinion, medical students did not earn big money on qualification, and so they were not in a position to easily start repaying debts.

"Many people who do a three year course can go into jobs where they earn a lot more than newly qualified doctors," she said.

"There is already a shortage of doctors in this country and our concern is this will deter people from going into medicine.

"Medicine will become more and more an elist profession when doctors should come from all walks of life because they have to treat people from all walks of life."