Professor Derek Bell OBE, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, has called on The Scottish Government to expand Widening Access to Medicine - a programme which helps students from diverse backgrounds to study medicine.  

The one year pre-medical entry programme began in 2017, with The Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow sharing £330,000 of funding to help students from diverse backgrounds gain the experience and qualifications required to study medicine.   In its first year, 40 students out of a total of 42 completed the course and went on to attend medical school.  And from 2019, the number of places on the Widening Access to Medicine course will increase to 50 in total, across The Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow. 

The Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, Jeane Freeman MSP, said in November 2018: “This course contributes to our commitment to widen access to higher education and enhances the range of medical education already available in Scotland’s five world-leading medical schools.”

However, Professor Bell thinks that The Scottish Government should be more ambitious for Widening Access to Medicine. He has called for the number of places on the course to double to 100 for rural and disadvantaged students, due to higher demand. The number of students from Scotland’s poorest neighbourhoods accepting a place to study medicine has grown by 50 per cent in the last five years.

Scotland has five medical schools: Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, Dundee and Aberdeen. As part of the widening access agenda, The Scottish Government has also introduced ScotGEM which offers a four-year graduate entry medical programme, designed to meet the contemporary and future needs of the NHS in Scotland. It focuses on rural medicine and healthcare improvement.

Commenting on Widening Access to Medicine, Professor Bell said:

Students from diverse parts of Scotland can often find it more difficult to access medicine, due to the lack of access to information or advice about the benefits of studying medicine, and what experience and qualifications are required to get into medical school. Although this may seem like a basic barrier, we note that there are about 10 applications for every medical school place in Scotland. It’s important, therefore, to level the playing field in this fiercely competitive area.

While we welcome Widening Access to Medicine, which has had early success, we don’t think that it goes far enough. We want to see more ambition from the Scottish Government in helping create a more diverse medical workforce. Ministers can do that by doubling the number of places for students from diverse backgrounds.

More widely, it’s important that both government and medical professionals play their part in encouraging the next generation of doctors. That is why the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh hosts an annual series of schools lectures, where pupils can hear from experienced doctors about why studying medicine could be for them.

A career in medicine is both challenging and rewarding, and you will gain the skills required to make a real difference to people’s lives, by helping to alleviate what can be complex medical problems. There is a wide choice of medical careers too, as well as many opportunities in teaching, research and management.

Ultimately, increasing medical school places is essential, and more needs to be done in terms of recruitment and retention of medical professionals at all grades, in Scotland and the UK.