New medical course launched

The School of Clinical Medicine has launched a major new development in medical education. The Cambridge Graduate Course in Medicine is an innovative four-year course designed to allow graduates from any discipline to enter the medical profession.

Graduate entry to the medical profession has been the norm in the USA for many years and has been adopted more recently in Australia. It is now being developed in this country, in part as a response to the critical shortage of doctors in the NHS, but more importantly as a way to enrich the medical profession by attracting people from a more diverse range of backgrounds. Similar courses have been set up at other UK medical schools, including Oxford and St.George's in London.

Rather than providing a condensed version of the traditional medical education, these courses offer a radical new syllabus which emphasises community medicine and general practice. At Cambridge the students will work with patients from the start of the course, allowing them to develop their clinical and communication skills at the same time as they study the core medical sciences.

The Cambridge course is a partnership with the University and the West Suffolk Hospital and local General Practices in Bury St Edmunds. The partnership will allow the students to undertake integrated clinical attachments which help them to understand the working links between hospital services and GPs in the community.

Speaking at the launch of the new course last week, Sir Keith Peters, Regius Professor Of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, explained its significance:

"This course will allow the University to react to the national need for more doctors by drawing upon a pool of people who had previously thought that medicine was not open to them."

The Course Director is Dr Paul Siklos, a consultant at West Suffolk Hospital and Associate Clinical Dean at the University of Cambridge. He is pleased with the response so far:

"We received 109 applications for the first year of the course from which 20 students have been selected. Included amongst these are five humanities graduates, suggesting that the course is already beginning to attract students from a broad range of backgrounds."