You may remember back in September last year I wrote a blog around the announcement of plans to allow the University of St Andrews to once again award degrees in medicine and dentistry, and the BMA’s support for removing this outdated prohibition. I am pleased to follow this up now with the news that the University of St. Andrews (Degrees in Medicine and Dentistry) Bill was passed unanimously this week by the Scottish Parliament following its Stage 3 debate.
We have closely watched and contributed to this bill at every step of the way. In our initial evidence to the Health and Sport Committee, the BMA was clear that ScotGEM students had set out on their journey with the expectation that their degrees would be jointly awarded by the University of St Andrews and the University of Dundee, rather than by the University of Dundee alone. For a number of ScotGEM students, this was an important factor in their decision to apply and had it not been on offer, many may well have applied to another institution. In the issue of fairness to these students, we believed that the section of legislation targeted by the bill should be repealed fully to allow the University of St Andrews to hold qualifying examinations and award degrees in medicine, and the latter will now happen next summer when the first of us complete the ScotGEM programme. This will make us, the ‘charter cohort’ of ScotGEM, the first to graduate with a primary medical qualification from the University of St Andrews in over fifty years.
I gave evidence to the Health and Sport Committee in December last year and highlighted that the majority of ScotGEM students wanted the joint award – one strong reason being that it is the University of St Andrews that looks after us for the first two years. We spend a lot of time there early in the course, making friends, learning from staff and clinicians in Fife, living and studying alongside the students from the non-ScotGEM cohort. Though many of us spend the latter half of the course based throughout Scotland including in Inverness, Dumfries and of course in Dundee, our time spent in St Andrews will always be special and now it will be given the recognition it deserves on our final degree certificates.
The committee also heard from representatives from both universities and other stakeholders, as well as my fellow ScotGEM student, Andrew MacFarlane, who gave evidence on behalf of surveyed students. There has been near-unanimous support for this bill through its every stage, which I’m happy to see reflected in this week’s vote in Parliament with huge support from across the political spectrum.
I know my ScotGEM colleagues are extremely happy with this outcome. We all now have another reason to be proud to be part of Scotland’s first graduate entry medical training programme, which will now also be the first joint-award medical degree in Scotland and one of only three across the UK.
Callum George is Deputy Chair of SMSC and ScotGEM student
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