How is clinical exposure at Oxbridge?

Hi,

I've got some funding opportunities hence thinking of applying to Oxbridge and few other UK medical universities. I wanted to know how is clinical exposure at Oxbridge? I've read that the clinical exposure during clinical years is very low because of less patient flow and no variety of cases at the hospitals. Is this correct? Is medicine course at Oxbridge more inclined for career in medical research? Personally I'm not too inclined towards a career in research and would prefer to being a GP.

Thank you for reading my thread.

Praveer

Who have you heard this from? Certainly not my experience.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have very limited pre-clinical contact, but "exposure" in clinical years is no less than anywhere else, you're in hospital/GP for the majority of 3 years. Both Addenbrooke's and the JR are very busy tertiary centres with virtually every specialty represented at one or both. Plenty of variety. The DGHs are as busy as you'd expect most UK acute hospitals to be.

It is true that Oxford and Cambridge don't have the ethnic or social diversity of London but as regional centres of expertise you still get plenty of interesting cases. Plus as a medical student you don't really need to see lots of weird and wonderful stuff, you need to get good at managing the basics. It doesn't matter if you've never seen Niemann-Pick disease, it does matter if you can't manage an acute abdomen/pneumonia.

Yes, Oxford is great for research and son may well go into this area, but there were still people on his course who want to be gps.

During first degree there are just a few weeks in Gp surgery. Real clinical experience doesn’t kick off until year 4.

However one thing I will say about the Oxford course, it is very detailed. And hard to get into.

If early clinical contact is your bag, Oxford will not be for you.

As above - its very limited in preclinical but you get just as much exposure during clinical. The hospitals are major tertiary centres that many other hospitals refer to (in part because of all the research that happens there...) and I would not be worried about that at all.

It's true than in terms of national centres for super specialised stuff they are all in London. But a) you still get plenty of 1 in a million diagnoses at other tertiary centres b) this is not the important stuff anyway and c) actually you don't spend much time in these super specialised centres as a student. I knew one guy who applied to UCL specifically because the Moorfields Eye Hospital was part of that uni - well it turns out med students don't do a single placement there! Because why would they - its a super specialist eye hospital not relevant to med students at all

I just wanted to chip in here, not because I'm in Medicine (I'm a Linguist), but because of where I live.

I live in the City and go to a surgery not far from Barts.

However, I live very close to the boundary with Tower Hamlets and the Royal London is not far away.

The surgery occasionally has medical students in who sit in on consultations. They come from Barts and the London School of Medicine and so their 'patch' for want of a better expression, covers an area in which the population are actually fairly lucky in terms of income and health, ie the City of London; it also covers Tower Hamlets, however and I gather that the situation there re Public Health is less fortunate. I gather, for instance, that there are TB cases in Tower Hamlets.

It seems to be that the situation here is quite unique and it occurs to me that the medical students at Barts and the London are in a position to experience more aspect of medicine that they might do in an area which is more homogenous, for want of a better expression. If I were looking at going into medicine, I would certainly look at what the Medical School here has to offer.

It's also true that the Toyal London is an area of particular expertise in emergency medicine - the red helicopter flies over our building on a regular basis bringing casualties in to it. Re Barts, I gather that it now has a special area of expertise in the treatment of cancer.

I'm not speaking from the point of view of being in medicine myself, of course; it's just my perspective, having lived here for some time.

Thank you so much for your valuable reply. But generally asking, won't having an opportunity to see a variety of cases during internship is actually a good thing? Isn't it the reason why some students take clinical electives in countries like India where the patient exposure is huge? Kindly correct me if I'm wrong.

You do still see plenty of variety. Students go on elective to experience medicine in a different country, both the conditions experienced and how different healthcare systems manage things (theoretically - lots go for a holiday with a few sessions in hospital/clinic!) - not just extra patient exposure.

There may be a couple of conditions that London-based students have seen more frequently than students from elsewhere - not just Oxbridge - but overall the difference is not significant.