Intended for healthcare professionals

Student Life

Older & wiser?

BMJ 2006; 332 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0603118 (Published 01 March 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;332:0603118
  1. Stephanie Gapper, second year graduate entry medical student1
  1. 1University of Nottingham

Stephanie Gapper considers the pros and cons of graduate entry medicine

You can't poke your nose out of doors as a medical student without being bombarded with information concerning the changing face of medicine and the medical workforce. There's Modernising Medical Careers, problem based learning, personal and professional development, and a host of other things, all designed to “ease” the transition through medical school and into your working life—and in the process, complicating things horrendously. Among all this is yet another one: graduate entry medicine.

Teaching medicine to students who already have another degree is nothing particularly new. In the United States, medicine has been exclusively a postgraduate course for generations, and Ireland has now gone the same way. Australia has been running a combination of graduate and undergraduate courses for over a decade. Britain has come to the fold rather late (the first graduate entry course was set up at St George's in 2000), although mature students have been on undergraduate courses for as long as they've been going. With the first cohort of graduate entry medics released on to the wards last year, the time is ripe to compare and contrast (you can tell I was a history student in my former life) the achievements and abilities of graduate entry versus undergraduate medics.

UK medical schools offering graduate entry medicine

  • Birmingham

  • Bristol

  • Cambridge

  • Guy's, King's, and St Thomas's

  • Leicester-Warwick

  • Liverpool

  • Newcastle

  • Nottingham (at Derby)

  • Oxford

  • Southampton

  • Barts and the London Queen Mary's

  • St George's Hospital Medical School

  • University College London

  • University of Wales (Swansea with final years at Cardiff)

A bit of clarification

Graduate entry medicine was introduced in Australia partly as a way to address the shortfall in doctors: a shorter course equals more doctors, faster. That was also some of the rationale for its introduction in the United Kingdom. Currently, 14 medical schools offer graduate entry medicine …

View Full Text

Log in

Log in through your institution

Subscribe

* For online subscription