NEWLY qualified doctors are driving Ubers and working in bars to make ends meet as they face a “recurring cycle of debt,” the British Medical Association (BMA) has said.

Students from poorer backgrounds are hit hardest, the union claims, as it calls on the government to address the funding gap and make a career in medicine accessible to everyone.

It highlighted that students in their final undergraduate year, along with those in the later years of a postgraduate medical degree, get a reduced student loan alongside an NHS bursary.

This leads to a £3,674 drop in funding on average, according to the BMA.

Sophie Mitchell, deputy co-chair (finance) of the BMA’s medical students’ committee, said: “A lot of people are using these loans in previous years to either pay their rent and to live off.

“Losing out on a significant portion of that is meaning that students are struggling.

“We’ve got people maxing out overdrafts, we’ve got people maxing out credit cards.

“We’ve got people going into very significant debt just to actually finish this degree.”

Ms Mitchell said she knows of new graduates stewarding football matches or taking zero-hours bar work to get by.

She added: “We have people working behind bars. We have people stewarding.

“One of my friends is actually working for Uber at the moment, because it was the only work that she could get that meant that she could get some employment in the area that she’s in.”

Ms Mitchell is heading the BMA’s Fix Our Finance campaign alongside co-chair Henry Budden and is calling on the government to ensure medical students receive full finance maintenance for the entirety of their course.

The Department of Health and Social Care was contacted for comment.