Original post by artful_loungerOk I was going to discuss aspects of scientific preparation and the relation to practicing as a physician or surgeon but....
What are you talking about? Surgical specialties have some of the of the highest patient contact rates. You are required to be engaging with the patients and their families pre-op, then providing post-op care and assessment. Surgeries may well require repeated operations to fully correct the issue,a nd so even the concept of not developing long term relationships with patients isn't wholly accurate, although they do have less long term relationship building on the whole. But certainly...they are not a "low patient contact" specialty.
I think your view of the profession is inaccurate, which while not inherently a problem if you actually take steps to educate yourself on it, is clearly the source of your entirely illogical positions on medical education. Also to go back to my initial point, without elaborating too much so you can take the opportunity to learn more about what the profession actually entails - PBL provides not only a suitable scientific and professional background for being a good pracitcing physician or surgeon, but it has been taken up as one of the primary methods of education, including as for example Harvard Medical School (where "traditional" format medical education is only available for MD/PhD students in the joint Harvard-MIT HST section, due to the advanced quantitative methods used), because it has been demonstrated to provide superior clinical abilities for physicians and surgeons.
Oxford and Cambridge are very much the exceptions to the rule due in large part to their reluctance to let go of "historical" methods - something which plagues the universities in many ways. However they still will implement similar methods in tutorials/supervisions as mentioned because they realise and they do include some clinical experiences in the first few years in the form of GP visits etc, because they realise not doing so is detrimental to the quality of their graduating students. Even at Cambridge you will be going on GP visits (in first year), you will be introduced to cases from Addenbrookes (in second year), you will experience different community healthcare based settings (in second and third years) and in third year of the "preclinical" phase you will actually be shadowing a pregnant woman with her family at her home and engaging with her as a human being, not as a batch of cells in a petri dish. You will also be expected to consider and respond to novel situations and cases through your supervision work as appropriate. Also none of this is "hidden knowledge" - it's very easy to find all this within about two clicks on the prospective students page...
If you lack the ability to appreciate decades of medical education research has determined that such integrated methods provide at least equivalent if not better scientific and practical clinical knowledge to become a physician or surgeon then perhaps medicine is not a good option. You need to be able to step back and appreciate that someone else may have more knowledge and better ability to advise on specific circumstances - this is not about me or this thread, but in terms of medicine generally. You cannot be a physician or surgeon as an island and refuse to interact with or take the advice of your colleagues. This same principle applies here. You are a year 12 student. You do not know what will provide the best medical education for you. If you are more inclined to scientific and academic possibilities, then focus on selecting courses to apply to which require or offer the ability to intercalate in a scientific discipline allied to medicine as well as more clinical areas.
And to just shoot down what I imagine will be your rebuttals:
it doesn't matter what you feel or think, you're a 6th form student, not a medical educator or researcher or even practicing medical professional. It's not possible for you to know what will and won't benefit you.
Baseless. The GMC accredits all medical degrees, traditional or otherwise, to provide a very high level of scientific understanding of medicine as require to become a practicing physician or surgeon. If your aim is to not become a practicing physician or surgeon, don't apply to medicine. A PBL course is just as suitable for a budding academic clinician as a traditional and vice versa for those not wanting to pursue that route.
As above. This has been researched for decades, other people know better than you what will and won't benefit you. Clinical exposure activities are extremely expensive and potentially difficult for medical schools to arrange. They will not waste money arranging such activities if they did not know before that it will benefit their students.
As a 6th form student your "opinion" on medical education has literally no grounding in reality other than what others may suggest to you. Empirical research however does agree with that, and that is why the GMC accredits all degrees to ensure that a sound backing in the molecular and scientific basis of medicine is provided by every accredited UK medical degree. Thus it's irrelevant how that information as taught because it will be taught.
As above, if you are unable or unwilling to accept that the curricular content of every medical degree is essentially identical outside of SSCs and similar, then I would suggest considering another course. While preferring not to wholly focus on PBL is perfectly reasonable you need to accept you are going to need to engage in group working environments you are going to need to assess case studies during the course of your medical education and beyond and you are going to be in environments where you will have to think on your feet and and there won't be a cookie cutter solution and sometimes you may get it wrong. That is part and parcel of the profession.
I would end by clarifying that the above is being pointed out for your benefit - the medical education system has been structured in a way to benefit you and make sure you can be the best physician or surgeon you can be. This is why virtually all such courses take variations of the "integrated" format - even so called traditional courses aren't purely split anymore. What is necessary is for you to appreciate the work done by others and accept their wisdom, and realise that at the end of the day either system will work to ensure you become a physician or surgeon - provided they accept you. I've yet to see a student indicate that a clinical encounter or case was a negative aspect of their course, and most seem to indicate it's the highlight of the course - both in traditional and other formats. If anything more criticism seems to be levied at such "traditional" courses not having more (and earlier) case and problem based learning and clinical engagement.
You have your list. Oxbridge, UCL, Imperial, QUB, Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews all have what is the modern form of "traditional" training - i.e. that you will learn predominantly in lectures and be supported by CBL and PBL, with clinical activities, to support this. There is not a single medical course I know of that will not have you touch a case or meet a patient before letting you out on the wards, as I said before.