One in ten trainee doctors claims to know someone who is selling their body because of increased living costs and rising tuition fees.
This is two-and-a-half times the number ten years ago, when only 4 per cent were aware of a peer placing themselves in the sex industry.
Jodi Dixon, a final-year medical student at the University of Birmingham, says in an editorial in the Student BMJ that it is no coincidence the boom coincides with soaring tuition fees.
When universities begin charging fees of up to £9,000 a year, the British Medical Association estimates medical students’ debts could increase to almost £70,000.
Miss Dixon, 24, said: ‘With escalating debts, students in the United Kingdom may view prostitution as an easy way to get rich quick.
‘This view could be fuelled by recent coverage of prostitution in the media – for example, the television dramatisation of the popular book Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
‘The show makes prostitution seem alluring.’
A survey published in 2010 found more than a quarter of 315 undergraduates at a London university knew of a student who had worked in the sex industry.
They listed pole or lap dancing as the most popular type of sex work, followed by stripping, but prostitution was the next most common.
About ten percent knew of someone who had worked as a prostitute or escort, and when asked why they thought students undertook sex work, 93 per cent gave the need for money as the main reason for doing so.
A Secret Diary of a Call Girl was based on the real life experiences of its author Brooke Magnanti, now a research scientist.
Medical schools do not believe prostitution among students is widespread.
They have no specific rule on this matter but do suggest medical students act within the General Medical Council’s guidance for medical practice, ‘Duties of a doctor’.
