Two new medical schools which offer enhanced exposure to general practice have been awarded full approval from the GMC.
Anglia Ruskin University’s School of Medicine, in Chelmsford, and Aston Medical School, part of Aston University in Birmingham, will be able to award medical degrees to graduating students for the first time this year.
Both institutions had had to show ‘a focus on the prioritised specialties of general practice, psychiatry and any other shortage specialties’ in order to receive funding to launch new medical school places in 2018.
Both Anglia Ruskin and Aston Medical School are now hoping their graduating cohort will be a valuable contribution to the understaffed GP workforce and reflect a diverse range of students including those from disadvantaged communities.
Dr Sanjiv Ahluwalia, head of the school of medicine at Anglia Ruskin University, said: ‘One of our main aims is to ensure there are opportunities for people from all backgrounds to study medicine, and we are proud to have a diverse student body that will serve the profession with distinction in the future.’
Professor Helen Cameron, dean of medical education at Aston Medical School, added: ‘This is a really exciting moment for Aston Medical School, and we are delighted for our students, especially our pioneer cohort who will graduate in July with an Aston University medical degree and contribute to the UK’s healthcare workforce.’
Professor Colin Melville, the GMC’s medical director and director of education and standards, said both medical schools had worked hard, over a number of years, to meet the GMC quality assurance standards.
The GMC oversees both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and training in the UK.
“Enhanced exposure to general practice ” suggest syllabus: dealing with spurious complaints and unrealistic expectations, learning how to not feel personally responsible for failings of emergency services and secondary care, how to prioritise five-seven complaints and work out what you need and can deal with in 10-15 minutes without offending the customer who rightly expects world-class service with referrals dealt with in timely manner. Speaking about referrals- how to function with ever increasing multimorbidity and complexity in specialty desert areas and with guidelines contradicting each other and common sense. (Here dermatology, gastroenterology, endocrinology, cardiology – pretty much do not exist outside 2ww or emergency care). Employing the unemployables because everyone else has left, if you are a partner. And most importantly- how, having worked a day like this, to be able to switch off, go home, have couple of hours of nearly normal life and have a good night sleep.
Specialty training needs to be extended by some 10-15 years in order to develop skills necessary for GP of today and foreseeable future
How ridiculous. Are they saying the graduates cannot then become a specialist?
5 year to find out how ‘good’ GP land is.Better have a really big mental health support unit on site.
Some Bloke has summarised the current day job very very accurately.
I don’t think anyone can train for the above and new docs will have to find their way and some unfortunately will not,
Not sure why my previous post about the fact that there is no such thing as gp focused medical schools got deleted. Pulse afraid of the truth???
Perhaps better to stop the GP and psych bashing in traditional medical schools?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/18/british-universities-no-longer-want-british-students/
Will an early focus on General Practice make students more or less likely to choose General Practice as their career option?
Very worrying obsession with increasing GP numbers at all costs – regardless of whether it is fair to the professionals being left exposed at the end of their training.
So many schemes e.g. Apprenticeships, non-consultant grade can be GP without GP training, increased ‘
Proportion of non-medically trained ‘octors’, etc
A critical skill is recognising more serious illness and working out how to manage. The clinical exposure acquired in 3 years clinical / hospital student experience followed by house jobs kept me out of trouble. Also quite useful when the hospital bounce cases back for the GP to manage complex conditions.
The unintended consequences need to be considered. We are exploring new worlds and there appears to be no recognition that such a world may bring significant risks – rather than setting up systems to test and adjust, they will simply set the dogs on the clinicians as issues due to the system arise.
Totally agree with John Evans.