Students stuck in medical school for seven years? - Amazon Web ...

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Features
Alexander Isted
Guest Writer
The debate in Parliament and in the
media about tuition fees has focussed
on whether or not the increased tuition
fees levied on graduates is a fair
solution to the problem of higher education
funding (at a time when the government
faces a large structural budget
deficit)! While this debate is certain
to continue, a more fundamental issue
arises for the medical profession – will
higher tuition fees undermine modern
medicine, by undoing years of progress
in shaping the doctor of today?
A steep climb
There was a time when the term ‘doc-
tor’ painted an image of an elitist, upper-middle
class, privately educated
individual. Characteristics such as arrogance
and self importance were deemed
acceptable in a bygone era in which patients
took a passive role in deciding
treatment. Doctors’ advice was taken as
Gospel and the social hierarchy implicit
in a consultation went unquestioned.
This kind of doctor is fortunately becoming
a distant memory. Today’s doctor
is a friend;; someone that the patient
can relate to and should feel respected by.
One of the most important factors
in facilitating this change is a widened
base of medical student recruitment
which now represents a far broader
cross section of society, encompassing
men and women from all ethnicities
and socioeconomic backgrounds. This
has largely been achieved via university
access programmes to ensure that the
best students are encouraged to apply
and are subsequently selected, regardless
of their school or financial status.
Now in its seventh year, King’s College
London’s Extended Medical Degree
Programme (EMDP) takes in students
from London’s ten lowest-performing
non-selective state schools, offering a
six-year degree in which the first two
years of a typical five-year course are
extended to three. The students are
required to pass the same exams with
the same pass marks so no double
standards are applied. Since the success
of the EMDP program at King’s,
the Universities of Southampton and
East Anglia have begun similar pro-
grams. St George’s University has developed
an “adjusted criteria scheme
[which] considers student applications
to study medicine in relation to the
peer group within which they studied”.
This means that pupils from state
comprehensives who achieve grades
that are 60% greater than the average
for their school will automatically
be offered a medical school interview.
Medical students themselves are
also getting involved in dispelling
myths. UCL’s ‘Target Medicine’ Outreach
Scheme, for example, sees current
medical students visiting non-selective
state schools to speak honestly
about their experience at medical school
and give school pupils the confidence
to pursue medicine as a career.
These programmes, combined with
increasing financial support in the form
of scholarships and bursaries, have led
to the gender and ethnic makeup of to-
February 2011 medicalstudent
Will tuition fees kill the ‘modern’ doctor?
Shackled to looming debt, the medical student has so far to go. Illustration by Gemma Goodyear
The estimated
total debt will be
£70,000.
day's medical profession. The GMC
medical register shows that at present,
practising doctors in the UK are compromised
of 58% men and 42% women,
and in terms of ethnic background, 35%
are white British, 10% are white non-
British, 19% are Asian and 3% are black.
It is not just the changes in the social
background, gender and ethnicity
of doctors which has modernised the
doctor-patient relationship. The manner
in which the core teaching principles
of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence
and justice are taught and
practised today has radically changed.
There is greater emphasis on producing
well-rounded doctors with good
communication skills as well as having
a strong intellect. The GMC’s ‘Good
Medical Practice’ guidelines stress
that “to fulfil your role in the doctorpatient
partnership you must be polite,
considerate, honest [and] treat patients