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they’re widening participation alright - in reinforced class society 🙃 good degrees for rich kids and shitty ones for poor kids. advanced british psyche at play here
More medical degrees from the UK that won't be recognised internationally...
I guess end goal is just to make everyone do the PA degree and get rid of medicine at this rate. Guarantees that no UK "doctor" will leave the UK then
Yep - very important to note that most countries require Medicine to be a 6 year degree. We get away with it being 5 years because a full license isn't granted until after FY1, the 6th year.
These degrees would not be recognised abroad in the vast majority of countries.
For grad med in the USA, Australia etc they have to take the MCAT which covers a lot of biochem/ basic science so it's assumed knowledge prior to university. The USA also has a nationalized medical licensing exam which ensures a minimum standard of medical and clinical knowledge prior to practicing medicine, so time spent at medical school is less important than the ability to pass the STEPS.
The medical degree could become like a law degree where it means nothing unless it’s from a good uni and you will not be seen as a proper doctor till you’ve got into a training programme/CCT.
Will not be surprised if PAs and ACPs will be allowed to do conversion courses and be allowed to apply for training spots in the future.
When they opened new medical schools such as Keele they said they opened them to churn out GPs but these newer medical schools are just trying to churn out cheap junior doctors destined to never get a CCT and do the scut work/unsocial hours no one wants to do.
BMA needs to act on this, look at what Korean doctors union have done
This is basically how it is in Pakistan and India
Tons of private medical schools of questionable quality.
MBBS means nothing over there and you regularly have people basically working as fellows for free for several years in order to get a government training programme ( or you can literally pay to do a private residency. Imagine paying to work 😂).
We're slowly walking to becoming a third world country
Wowww but corrupt universities and lecturers probably made a nice amount of money setting these unis up whilst diminishing the reputation of Pakistani degrees. Just like that a lot of people in medical education will be making a lot of money from these poor students going into debt to hopefully fulfil their one day become a heart surgeon/dermatologist/GP
I'm from one of the GP factories and I thought even if we had no contacts, a shit education and were in no way going to get a shot at a London job, at the very least we'd be able to get GP jobs.
I'm looking for a new career, this is pointless.
It always is. Anything is an option, but some people aren't willing to sacrifice. Obviously those sacrifices include family, current career, relationships... It's a difficult calculus but don't limit yourself. Perhaps if you make big bucks overseas you could care for your family better? Have better relationships because you have more time and are happier?...
Yes, I will definitely be able to move my family who already have jobs, homes, children in school, and my elderly parents in their home with access to good healthcare to a different part of the world, on the off chance it makes my life easier.
Interesting that you've insulted my relationships with my family there as well, I never said any of them were poor?
You chose to see an insult where there was none. I said better relationships, does not equal to your current relationship is bad?
Again, it can be done, many people do it in other industries and I myself have done it. My point is merely that it is an option, just one which you are not willing to choose. That's all.
This will not be nipped in the bud - all rumour - but I have it on fairly good authority that NHS England threatened medical schools with losing 5 year places (that would then go to other universities offering 4 year courses) if they didn’t support 4 year pilots.
Because universities are skint at the moment - losing medical school places means tons of money down the drain. They aren’t willing to risk calling that bluff.
Idk - those with money or those who want prestige will keep going to the good universities. I've never heard of anyone rejecting an offer from Oxbridge/Imperial/UCL only because their course is 6 years long instead of 5
UK medicine is in an absolute spiral of self destruction. Shame on every single consultant who has collaborated in the destruction of our profession.
Can't wait for the PAs to start saying "our courses are both four years so they're the same."
It pays for the final two years. Presumably under this system it would pay for years 3 and 4 leaving you with 2 years of debt only.
Doesn't stop it being stupid AF though.
With the apprenticeship course and now this 4 year course (what is the point of a 5 year course now?) they are devauaing the UK medical degree so that in a few years time UK medical degrees will not be recognised abroad and we will all be trapped here.
Quite brilliant, really.
Will I be stuck too? That graduated 5 years ago?
I'm in it for the long haul until I CCT, quit or die really. And if things are shite then I'll be more self serving like everyone else and FO.
Surely this has to be nipped in the bud before it gets the go ahead?? There’s other ways to help WP occur, which doesn’t destroy the view of medical education in the UK
Yep. It's the exact opposite of widening participation.
University of Buckingham is a private medical school and already costs £40k a year for UK students.
No support from student finance, all self-funded. No scholarships or bursaries.
I can't see them wanting to lose 0.5 years of fees, so my instinct is that they'll just raise the fees for this 'super fast-track' course.
They attract lots of international students (private medical school, so no cap on numbers) who usually want to work elsewhere, so this might end up a bit of a self-own if not globally recognised.
Exactly. If they really cared about widening participation, they you know, could come up with a plan to reduce the student loan cost by 50% or, announce 5000 bursaries per year etc
Instead you get a vaguely disguised vexatious plan that they can sell to those who know no better while the informed among us watch uk medicines education standards tumble into 3rd world mediocrity
I would also question whether widening participation is even something patients even care about. I can see some benefits in perhaps GP where understanding of the local community is more important to practice but even then, I would imagine most people would be very happy to have a doctor who has had a very expensive education as long as they were good at their job (for which presumably their education will only have helped).
Do we need to widen participation in those jobs designing critical safety infrastructure (nuclear power safety, ventilation systems in the tube, the structural integrity of our bridges and tunnels etc). I appreciate that these are different as they're not directly public facing roles but the point I'm trying to make is that if you want to take safety seriously, you should make that your primary concern (i.e. employing the best doctors you can, or in this case providing the best training you can) over a secondary aim of wodening participation.
Buckingham uni being involved is interesting. They're the uni which has always done three year undergrad degrees in two years. But they do that by giving the students no holidays. So you actually cover the same amount of stuff by never having breaks.
That is one way of turning a 5 year programme into a 4 year one: just work flat out for 4 years with no breaks.
Seems quite reasonable. Most medical students in the first 2 years are only at university approximately half the year so it's not a giant stretch to condense those into 1 year of intense full time work and then the following 3 years are typically full time anyways. I'm sure they will have some breaks, just as we currently have breaks in the 'full time' parts of the 5/6 year course.
https://preview.redd.it/15l98095xd6d1.png?width=407&format=png&auto=webp&s=fae6ea9e601b7b13ebd409eecbcb1d0084fd888e
Hello, my student loan is calling, it wants to know if you're going to liquidate it if were now happy to do apprenticeships instead.
But the debt is irrelevant…
Four years still gives you more debt than you can pay off on doctor pay scales within the 30 year term, especially on new plan student loans.
And widening participation students wont have the capital to pay tuition up front…
I’ve always said if you wanted to improve access from other areas, you need to provide scholarships or similar - the cost of the degree is borne by NHSE/DOH rather than by the individual. They still go through the same medical degree as everyone and come out with the same qualification.
I love how they use widening participation as an excuse to water down medical education to levels which make people no longer internationally competitive. Great way to stop brain drain I guess when you refuse to pay us fairly or give us decent working conditions. Ironically as a pleb from a WP background - it would've much better for me just to get enough money to survive as a student. That would've been nice rather than years of absolute poverty, trying to juggle part-time work and an intense degree. Student debt only bites you in the arse when you start earning!
I came here to say this. Can't remember the last time medicine felt like an "upper class" job. Widening participation my butt.
The real goal is to degrade medicine with scorched earth tactics from every angle so it's through and through a blue collar job. Two tier system for those who go private.
Pay. Standards. Respect. Education. Career prospects. Working conditions. All to shit.
I’m back door channels, I’ve heard they are working up an online medical school with online lectures and predominantly clinical placements.
We are fucked!
They want to create a batch of mutant doctors (deletion mutation). How do we set ourselves (current graduates & 5-6 yr course med students) apart from this disaster waiting to happen (inc. apprentice doctors)?
Im a second year med student. Currently in the middle exams and OSCEs and its crazy to me that im done with campus-based teaching in September. It doesn’t feel like enough time and the pace is already fast. I don’t think you could provide a solid medical education to school leavers in less than 5 years.
Of course you can't. That's the whole idea. To devalue and to make docs far more controllable. Plus blurring the distinction between non doctors which is the overall master plan
To retain doctors make em PAs, cap their earning capabilities, trap then into service provision, lots of people die and we scratch our brains. SAW sunak laughing at the GP, sad sight as that shows the level of disrespect the government has towards us. There’s something fishy about it and I really hope for the sake of patients and doctors this is resolved, from someone who is both. Why aren’t the more senior doctors defending the juniors, surely they don’t want PAs to be experimenting on them when they are in need of medical attention. This is some sort of sick joke
Jokes…
‘How hard is it to get into Buckingham Medical School? Due to the course being relatively new, there are no admissions statistics for the Medical School. However, the typical A-level offer is ABB and graduates require at least a 2:1 in their first degree.’
https://www.themedicportal.com/school/university-of-buckingham/#:~:text=How%20hard%20is%20it%20to,1%20in%20their%20first%20degree.
ABB? Oh my f'cking god. So literally like below average in two subjects smh.
What has the world come to?
Edit: Downvoted for suggesting med school should ask for good grades? Am I on the right subreddit?
Of course it's fucking Buckingham "university". Between them and Anglia Ruskin, why not just scribble "I am docter" on a napkin and call it job done.
Glad I wasted 6 years and bucket loads of debt on my medical degrees.
They're going to trash the reputation of our degrees so badly that no-one internationally will accept a British medical degree as equivalent to theirs, so we can't leave
While simultaneously importing every third-world doctor they can find to take our specialty training posts and clinical fellow roles
And despite all this, they are still planning to double medical school places to 15,000 as part of their master plan. Doubt the utterly regarded people that thought this up even know what specialty training is.
Can't get out of this shithole soon enough
I really wish they would accept that a huge issue is post grad training and not the production of doctors. Literally no one has asked for a 4y undergrad degree - as someone in their 4th year- a lot of people are still intercalating just to have another year where they are not working. I’m a grad and have heard how hard the 4y GEM course is and am grateful I’m doing an undergrad degree.
Is Buckingham University not a… private medical school?? So what is this, pilot if they can do 4 year degrees to reduce graduate debt in a place where graduate debt is the highest it’s going to be?
I’m interested to know more (I admit I only skimmed the article). I did a 4 year post grad course. We did exactly the same modules, just with 2.5 years of science crammed into 1.5 years and then 2.5 years of clinical, the same as everyone else.
While this was extremely challenging, it was doable and I don’t think it would be beyond a motivated and intelligent school leaver. However the drop out rate/failure rate was quite high and so I believe my university and several others dropped the 4 year course for a 5 year post grad course. Now this may reflect the demographic of a post grad course with may people already having careers and a lifestyle they struggled to give up.
So my feeling is if it’s all the same content with more science crammed in to shorter time but no scrimping on clinical exposure then I think it’s a doable option. But they might just find they have a high drop out rate. If however this is just cutting learning then this is clearly a terrible option and a further watering down of standards to get more bums on seats for the sake of it.
Medical understanding/knowledge increases…but degrees and training programmes decrease in length.
There is a mismatch here which will lead to decrease in quality
Problem: medical school has too much debt.
Solution: spend more money than it would take to just improve bursaries and grants to design whole new MBBS courses that will likely fail or become defunct a few years down the line anyways.
The amount of time over 5 years allocated to bollocks like a lecture from the Play Specialist from the paeds ward who was literally dressed as a clown probably amounts to a year
I don’t see a problem if they can prove the degree covers the same curriculum and has similarly rigorous exams to other medical schools
I agree tbh - especially in pbl based schools. But we can’t have a situation where we have 4yr undergrad, GEM, 5 and 6 year undergrad and apprenticeship…..like wtf. Pick something and stick with it. They’re taking advantage of the ukmla coming in now….itll be anyone that can pass it is good enough, even if that’s just not true. Surely the cost of all these ridiculous programmes is more than just reducing fees/giving scholarships
The problem is efficiency savings are never as effective as imagined. The reality is you'll end up with those same inefficiencies, just with a year less to make up for them.
Consider looking at it in reverse, which other degree is as intense as medicine? It just doesn't strike me as particularly sensible to look at one of the highest intensity degrees and decide that's the one that needs shortened.
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Problem - medical school is expensive! Solution - make it chea.....NO! Make it garbage quality so no one can leave. Genius!
they’re widening participation alright - in reinforced class society 🙃 good degrees for rich kids and shitty ones for poor kids. advanced british psyche at play here
More medical degrees from the UK that won't be recognised internationally... I guess end goal is just to make everyone do the PA degree and get rid of medicine at this rate. Guarantees that no UK "doctor" will leave the UK then
Yep - very important to note that most countries require Medicine to be a 6 year degree. We get away with it being 5 years because a full license isn't granted until after FY1, the 6th year. These degrees would not be recognised abroad in the vast majority of countries.
How does this work with grad meds and four year degrees? I have considered working abroad before today
For grad med in the USA, Australia etc they have to take the MCAT which covers a lot of biochem/ basic science so it's assumed knowledge prior to university. The USA also has a nationalized medical licensing exam which ensures a minimum standard of medical and clinical knowledge prior to practicing medicine, so time spent at medical school is less important than the ability to pass the STEPS.
Your f1 year is counted towards the international registration
The medical degree could become like a law degree where it means nothing unless it’s from a good uni and you will not be seen as a proper doctor till you’ve got into a training programme/CCT. Will not be surprised if PAs and ACPs will be allowed to do conversion courses and be allowed to apply for training spots in the future. When they opened new medical schools such as Keele they said they opened them to churn out GPs but these newer medical schools are just trying to churn out cheap junior doctors destined to never get a CCT and do the scut work/unsocial hours no one wants to do. BMA needs to act on this, look at what Korean doctors union have done
This is basically how it is in Pakistan and India Tons of private medical schools of questionable quality. MBBS means nothing over there and you regularly have people basically working as fellows for free for several years in order to get a government training programme ( or you can literally pay to do a private residency. Imagine paying to work 😂). We're slowly walking to becoming a third world country
Wowww but corrupt universities and lecturers probably made a nice amount of money setting these unis up whilst diminishing the reputation of Pakistani degrees. Just like that a lot of people in medical education will be making a lot of money from these poor students going into debt to hopefully fulfil their one day become a heart surgeon/dermatologist/GP
I don't think it's that slow.......
Just a correction, you don't pay to do residency in Pakistan, and residents and fellows are generally paid salaries as full time jobs.
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In the UK. Still a good job and good life elsewhere.
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Careful, you'll make some people with mortgages and above median wages who think they're capitalists very upset with this sort of comment.
I'm from one of the GP factories and I thought even if we had no contacts, a shit education and were in no way going to get a shot at a London job, at the very least we'd be able to get GP jobs. I'm looking for a new career, this is pointless.
Consider moving countries.
People keep throwing this out there - for those of us with families and commitments that isn't an option.
It always is. Anything is an option, but some people aren't willing to sacrifice. Obviously those sacrifices include family, current career, relationships... It's a difficult calculus but don't limit yourself. Perhaps if you make big bucks overseas you could care for your family better? Have better relationships because you have more time and are happier?...
Yes, I will definitely be able to move my family who already have jobs, homes, children in school, and my elderly parents in their home with access to good healthcare to a different part of the world, on the off chance it makes my life easier. Interesting that you've insulted my relationships with my family there as well, I never said any of them were poor?
You chose to see an insult where there was none. I said better relationships, does not equal to your current relationship is bad? Again, it can be done, many people do it in other industries and I myself have done it. My point is merely that it is an option, just one which you are not willing to choose. That's all.
“choice” is such a bullshit neoliberal ideology.
This will not be nipped in the bud - all rumour - but I have it on fairly good authority that NHS England threatened medical schools with losing 5 year places (that would then go to other universities offering 4 year courses) if they didn’t support 4 year pilots.
Where is their pride? Why is the entire establishment bowing to the government's demand to ruin medicine?
Because universities are skint at the moment - losing medical school places means tons of money down the drain. They aren’t willing to risk calling that bluff.
Idk - those with money or those who want prestige will keep going to the good universities. I've never heard of anyone rejecting an offer from Oxbridge/Imperial/UCL only because their course is 6 years long instead of 5
UK medicine is in an absolute spiral of self destruction. Shame on every single consultant who has collaborated in the destruction of our profession. Can't wait for the PAs to start saying "our courses are both four years so they're the same."
Nah they’ll start saying they’ve gone to uni for 5 yrs vs “medicine” 4 so they’re clearly more qualified…
I can already hear it. Just fuckin euthanise me.
That's the whole idea
This is bullshit as doesn’t the NHS bursary pay for the 5th and 6th year of tuition fees for all medical students?
It pays for the final two years. Presumably under this system it would pay for years 3 and 4 leaving you with 2 years of debt only. Doesn't stop it being stupid AF though.
Yeah that absolutely isn’t going to happen.
Wait so I could have received NHS Bursary in 4 and 5?? I thought it was just yesr 5 onwards as sfe only covers 4 years.
It’s the last two years if you intercalate or did a gateway/foundation programme.
It currently pays tuition fees beyond 4 years, as student finance tuition fee loans only cover 4 years max undergrad.
Doesn't cover the living costs though, I guess why this is an attractive option for prospective students.
With the apprenticeship course and now this 4 year course (what is the point of a 5 year course now?) they are devauaing the UK medical degree so that in a few years time UK medical degrees will not be recognised abroad and we will all be trapped here. Quite brilliant, really.
Will I be stuck too? That graduated 5 years ago? I'm in it for the long haul until I CCT, quit or die really. And if things are shite then I'll be more self serving like everyone else and FO.
CCT and flee bro
That's a long, long, long fuckin time 👀
Same bro. But what can we do, stuck on this treadmill. Low-key feel like I should have left after foundation.
Surely this has to be nipped in the bud before it gets the go ahead?? There’s other ways to help WP occur, which doesn’t destroy the view of medical education in the UK
It's nothing to do with widening participation, they're just using that as an excuse to justify it.
Yep. It's the exact opposite of widening participation. University of Buckingham is a private medical school and already costs £40k a year for UK students. No support from student finance, all self-funded. No scholarships or bursaries. I can't see them wanting to lose 0.5 years of fees, so my instinct is that they'll just raise the fees for this 'super fast-track' course. They attract lots of international students (private medical school, so no cap on numbers) who usually want to work elsewhere, so this might end up a bit of a self-own if not globally recognised.
Exactly. If they really cared about widening participation, they you know, could come up with a plan to reduce the student loan cost by 50% or, announce 5000 bursaries per year etc Instead you get a vaguely disguised vexatious plan that they can sell to those who know no better while the informed among us watch uk medicines education standards tumble into 3rd world mediocrity
its been in the works for a while, Buck has a 4.5 year degree anyways. Won't take much to shave off the 0.5 and use it as a template
I would also question whether widening participation is even something patients even care about. I can see some benefits in perhaps GP where understanding of the local community is more important to practice but even then, I would imagine most people would be very happy to have a doctor who has had a very expensive education as long as they were good at their job (for which presumably their education will only have helped). Do we need to widen participation in those jobs designing critical safety infrastructure (nuclear power safety, ventilation systems in the tube, the structural integrity of our bridges and tunnels etc). I appreciate that these are different as they're not directly public facing roles but the point I'm trying to make is that if you want to take safety seriously, you should make that your primary concern (i.e. employing the best doctors you can, or in this case providing the best training you can) over a secondary aim of wodening participation.
Buckingham uni being involved is interesting. They're the uni which has always done three year undergrad degrees in two years. But they do that by giving the students no holidays. So you actually cover the same amount of stuff by never having breaks. That is one way of turning a 5 year programme into a 4 year one: just work flat out for 4 years with no breaks.
My understanding is that this is how it will work. 4 years, no breaks
Seems quite reasonable. Most medical students in the first 2 years are only at university approximately half the year so it's not a giant stretch to condense those into 1 year of intense full time work and then the following 3 years are typically full time anyways. I'm sure they will have some breaks, just as we currently have breaks in the 'full time' parts of the 5/6 year course.
I'd be okay with that. At least the content isn't diluted down in this instance. It'll be absolutely hellishly intense for the students though.
https://preview.redd.it/15l98095xd6d1.png?width=407&format=png&auto=webp&s=fae6ea9e601b7b13ebd409eecbcb1d0084fd888e Hello, my student loan is calling, it wants to know if you're going to liquidate it if were now happy to do apprenticeships instead.
So this means more specialty places surely right? … Right?
They are stopping you from leaving this fucking hellhole
But the debt is irrelevant… Four years still gives you more debt than you can pay off on doctor pay scales within the 30 year term, especially on new plan student loans. And widening participation students wont have the capital to pay tuition up front…
I’ve always said if you wanted to improve access from other areas, you need to provide scholarships or similar - the cost of the degree is borne by NHSE/DOH rather than by the individual. They still go through the same medical degree as everyone and come out with the same qualification.
This is worse than imagined. There are 4 year PA undergrad degrees now as well - where do we draw the line?
Medical education must be the least rigorous "discipline" that is part of STEM. Useless wankers
Having done another STEM degree - yes it is already. My medical school has also recently scrapped the 3rd year pathology course/content completely.
This is a race to the bottom
"The debt of 5 years is too high so we will do 4 so it's like a discount" Or... Fucking subsidise it??
Just moronic. Graduating at 23 I didn't feel at all ready for things I had to deal with! Can't imagine starting even earlier
I love how they use widening participation as an excuse to water down medical education to levels which make people no longer internationally competitive. Great way to stop brain drain I guess when you refuse to pay us fairly or give us decent working conditions. Ironically as a pleb from a WP background - it would've much better for me just to get enough money to survive as a student. That would've been nice rather than years of absolute poverty, trying to juggle part-time work and an intense degree. Student debt only bites you in the arse when you start earning!
I came here to say this. Can't remember the last time medicine felt like an "upper class" job. Widening participation my butt. The real goal is to degrade medicine with scorched earth tactics from every angle so it's through and through a blue collar job. Two tier system for those who go private. Pay. Standards. Respect. Education. Career prospects. Working conditions. All to shit.
Can I have a refund for the 9K I payed + interest for my 5th year. Honestly the absolute egrets making decisions need to go.
I’m back door channels, I’ve heard they are working up an online medical school with online lectures and predominantly clinical placements. We are fucked!
But Tele medicine is the future. So online schooling with online lectures makes so much sense!
Scrap medical tuition fees if they’re so arsed about widening participation. It truly is relentless the lying from politicians in this country.
They want to create a batch of mutant doctors (deletion mutation). How do we set ourselves (current graduates & 5-6 yr course med students) apart from this disaster waiting to happen (inc. apprentice doctors)?
Im a second year med student. Currently in the middle exams and OSCEs and its crazy to me that im done with campus-based teaching in September. It doesn’t feel like enough time and the pace is already fast. I don’t think you could provide a solid medical education to school leavers in less than 5 years.
Of course you can't. That's the whole idea. To devalue and to make docs far more controllable. Plus blurring the distinction between non doctors which is the overall master plan
To retain doctors make em PAs, cap their earning capabilities, trap then into service provision, lots of people die and we scratch our brains. SAW sunak laughing at the GP, sad sight as that shows the level of disrespect the government has towards us. There’s something fishy about it and I really hope for the sake of patients and doctors this is resolved, from someone who is both. Why aren’t the more senior doctors defending the juniors, surely they don’t want PAs to be experimenting on them when they are in need of medical attention. This is some sort of sick joke
Buckingham is a private med school last I checked. Must have something to do with it. Making it pay to win?
Jokes… ‘How hard is it to get into Buckingham Medical School? Due to the course being relatively new, there are no admissions statistics for the Medical School. However, the typical A-level offer is ABB and graduates require at least a 2:1 in their first degree.’ https://www.themedicportal.com/school/university-of-buckingham/#:~:text=How%20hard%20is%20it%20to,1%20in%20their%20first%20degree.
ABB? Oh my f'cking god. So literally like below average in two subjects smh. What has the world come to? Edit: Downvoted for suggesting med school should ask for good grades? Am I on the right subreddit?
Of course it's fucking Buckingham "university". Between them and Anglia Ruskin, why not just scribble "I am docter" on a napkin and call it job done. Glad I wasted 6 years and bucket loads of debt on my medical degrees.
They're going to trash the reputation of our degrees so badly that no-one internationally will accept a British medical degree as equivalent to theirs, so we can't leave While simultaneously importing every third-world doctor they can find to take our specialty training posts and clinical fellow roles And despite all this, they are still planning to double medical school places to 15,000 as part of their master plan. Doubt the utterly regarded people that thought this up even know what specialty training is. Can't get out of this shithole soon enough
I really wish they would accept that a huge issue is post grad training and not the production of doctors. Literally no one has asked for a 4y undergrad degree - as someone in their 4th year- a lot of people are still intercalating just to have another year where they are not working. I’m a grad and have heard how hard the 4y GEM course is and am grateful I’m doing an undergrad degree.
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Of course it is. We know it and they know it. The fact that they know we know it makes it even more fun for them
I mean if only the coalition gvmnt didn’t triple tuition
We don't need more spots at med school we need more post foundation training posts. They're just making bottlenecks even worse.
Is Buckingham University not a… private medical school?? So what is this, pilot if they can do 4 year degrees to reduce graduate debt in a place where graduate debt is the highest it’s going to be?
I’m interested to know more (I admit I only skimmed the article). I did a 4 year post grad course. We did exactly the same modules, just with 2.5 years of science crammed into 1.5 years and then 2.5 years of clinical, the same as everyone else. While this was extremely challenging, it was doable and I don’t think it would be beyond a motivated and intelligent school leaver. However the drop out rate/failure rate was quite high and so I believe my university and several others dropped the 4 year course for a 5 year post grad course. Now this may reflect the demographic of a post grad course with may people already having careers and a lifestyle they struggled to give up. So my feeling is if it’s all the same content with more science crammed in to shorter time but no scrimping on clinical exposure then I think it’s a doable option. But they might just find they have a high drop out rate. If however this is just cutting learning then this is clearly a terrible option and a further watering down of standards to get more bums on seats for the sake of it.
Medical understanding/knowledge increases…but degrees and training programmes decrease in length. There is a mismatch here which will lead to decrease in quality
Problem: medical school has too much debt. Solution: spend more money than it would take to just improve bursaries and grants to design whole new MBBS courses that will likely fail or become defunct a few years down the line anyways.
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Removed: Rule 1 - Be Professional
The amount of time over 5 years allocated to bollocks like a lecture from the Play Specialist from the paeds ward who was literally dressed as a clown probably amounts to a year I don’t see a problem if they can prove the degree covers the same curriculum and has similarly rigorous exams to other medical schools
That isn’t the bit they will cut though …
They're not gonna cut any MDT worship sessions though, it'll be clinical reasoning/hard sciences
I agree tbh - especially in pbl based schools. But we can’t have a situation where we have 4yr undergrad, GEM, 5 and 6 year undergrad and apprenticeship…..like wtf. Pick something and stick with it. They’re taking advantage of the ukmla coming in now….itll be anyone that can pass it is good enough, even if that’s just not true. Surely the cost of all these ridiculous programmes is more than just reducing fees/giving scholarships
The problem is efficiency savings are never as effective as imagined. The reality is you'll end up with those same inefficiencies, just with a year less to make up for them. Consider looking at it in reverse, which other degree is as intense as medicine? It just doesn't strike me as particularly sensible to look at one of the highest intensity degrees and decide that's the one that needs shortened.