Medical school in the United Kingdom
All leading British medical schools are state-funded and their core purpose is to train doctors on behalf of the National Health Service.
This contrasts with the US and Canadian (outside Quebec) systems, where a bachelor's degree is required for entry to medical school.
[3] As of 2025 entry into medical schools the BMAT has been discontinued and students now only need to sit the UCAT exams.
[4] There are national quotas imposed on the number of places for students on medicine and dentistry courses in the UK as much of the training needs to occur in a healthcare setting.
Criteria assessed at individual stations may include: After successful completion of clinical training a student graduates as a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, abbreviated as Broadly speaking, undergraduate medical education in the United Kingdom may be thought of along two continuums: These two can be combined in different ways to form different course types, and in reality few medical schools are at the extremes of either axis but occupy a middle ground.
Problem-based learning (PBL) is a principle based on the educational philosophy of the French educationalist Célestin Freinet in the 1920s,[11] and is used in many subject areas including medicine.
In the UK, the focus is on a PBL-tutorial which is conducted in small groups of around 8–10 students (although this varies with seniority and between medical school) with a tutor (or facilitator) who usually comes from either a clinical or academic background, depending on the level of the course.
The introduction of PBL in the UK coincided with a General Medical Council report in 2003, Tomorrow's Doctors,[15] which recommended an increased proportion of learning should be student-centred and self-directed.
This encouraged medical schools to adopt PBL, however some medical schools have adopted other methods to increase self-directed learning, whilst others (notably Oxford and Cambridge) have always had a high proportion of student-centred and self-directed learning, and have therefore not introduced PBL.
Brighton and Sussex Medical School has a lecture-based approach supported by small-group and self-directed work.
Tomorrow's Doctors [15] also criticised the amount of unnecessary scientific knowledge irrelevant to clinical practice that medical students were required to learn, meaning that the curricula were altered in other ways around the same time that PBL was introduced in the UK.
One study criticising problem-based learning found that some medical specialist registrars and consultants believe that PBL can promote incomplete learning and educational blind spots; particularly in anatomy [16] and basic medical sciences, due to ultimate decision making within the PBL group resting with the students.
This has also brought into question whether the lack of anatomical knowledge adequately prepares graduates for surgery, or negatively affects enthusiasm to enter certain specialties; including academic medicine, surgery, pathology and microbiology.,[17] although the purposeful reduction in anatomy teaching within all medical curricula which occurred following Tomorrow's Doctors [15] may be in part to blame for reduced anatomical knowledge, rather than it being due to PBL.
Key points in support of LBL include that students gain the opportunity to listen to leading clinicians or academics, whereas PBL tutors may be underused.
[21] Lecture-based learning is also considerably cheaper to organise, requiring fewer staff members who can deliver lectures to large numbers of students at once, rather than the large number of separate tutors needed to deliver problem-based learning to small groups of eight students.
LBL has been criticised for 'spoon feeding' students and thus not preparing them for future continued medical education, which is by necessity, self-directed.
Some have also criticised lecture based learning for overloading students with information that may not be relevant to their first years in clinical practice,[21] however this has more to do with curriculum design and course structure than teaching method.
Since Tomorrow's Doctors,[15] there has been a move in the UK towards integrating clinical and non-clinical subjects together to a greater extent.
However it is criticised for producing graduates with inferior communication skills and making transition into the clinical environment more difficult in year 3 or 4.
[23] Criticisms include, questioning whether students in the first year have a place in the healthcare environment, when actual clinical knowledge may be virtually nil.
The new system, called the UK Foundation Programme, (implemented by the NHS Modernising Medical Careers) involves a simplified online application process, without interviews, based on a matching scheme.
They are ranked based both on the answers given on their application form, and their marks gained in examinations during their undergraduate career, the resulting score determines which job the student will get when they graduate.
Master's degrees are offered at some schools for students who have completed the fourth year of their medical course.
Higher research related masters and academic doctorates are typically undertaken at the end of the fifth year of the course.
There is typically strong competition to secure funding from external institutions such as pharmaceutical companies, as such research related intercalated degrees may be in an area the student has little long-term interest, a frequent criticism.
The major benefit of an intercalated degree is the increased chance of selection to competitive training routes such as Academic Medicine or Surgery.
At many medical schools, the year is optional, and a relatively small percentage of students elect to study for it.
At the University of Nottingham, all students undertake a research project and dissertation under the supervision of schools within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, leading to a BMedSci (Hons) Degree in the third year.
Whilst this additional degree is uniquely awarded within the five-year period of study, Nottingham medical students undertake heavily extended third and fourth years of up to 48 weeks in order to accomplish both the BMedSci and early clinical training.
Meducation is an online revision and learning tool that encourages social interaction between medical students worldwide.
