Medical Education in Great Britain

I n Great Britain before admission to a course of training in medicine, young people are required to show in an examination of matriculation. It is a respectable knowledge of English, a foreign language other than English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and some other school subjects of the candidate's own selection. Latin is no longer exacted by the General Medical Council (GMC), although in certain universities it is compulsory for students who desire to obtain a medical degree.

The medical curriculum carries the student through a succession of stages, which merge insensibly one into the other until the accumulated knowledge and steadily increasing skill will be conferring by the diploma or degree, which admits him to all the responsibilities of medical practice. The most notable modification in medical education made during recent years is the organization of clinical units.

The staff of a clinical unit consists of a director and three or four assistants. Either the director himself or one of his assistants is a whole-time officer of the university. Each unit are assigned a number of beds – usually 60 or 70 – in suitable wards with adequate laboratory accommodation in their near vicinity and an ample supply of apparatus for the examination of the patients. An out-patient department is included in the unit. Students examine chemically and microscopically the blood and other analysis. They make every kind of measurement, and as the wards are open throughout the day they have the opportunity of seeing how patients should be treated, nursed and cared in every respect.

As a result of the careful allocation, the modern students find that they have less opportunity than their forerunners of paying special attention to any branch that attracts him. Diseases of the eye, of the throat, of the ear and of the other organs, are treated with sufficient fullness for the equipment of general practitioners, but not with the thoroughness necessary to make specialists. The students who propose to specialize must continue their studies after graduation. An increasing number of graduates, who do not propose to devote themselves to a single specialty, but wish to make themselves proficient in particular branches of their work, defer going into practice or return from time to time to a medical school in order to keep abreast with advances in knowledge and technique.

Work for Doctors in Great Britain. Medical Practice

The majority of doctors in Great Britain work in a system of hospitals, family medical centers or state system of health care. Some of them may be employed at the universities, teaching students or carrying out scientific research. There is tight cooperation between universities and hospitals.

Medical training and practice in Great Britain has tasks to correspond the needs of NHS (National Health System), and may differ from those in other countries by duration and structurally. At present this structure undergoes fundamental reorganization.