Medical schools are failing to serve the community

Medical schools are failing to ensure adequate service to the community, said delegates at a conference last month. An international panel of medical educators from the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) highlighted access to medical school and dwindling numbers of rural general practitioners, as key areas where medical schools were failing.

Dame Lesley Southgate, president elect of the Royal College of General Practitioners, explained her involvement in establishing a distance learning medical course in order to widen access. The course is being run in association with the Open University, with eight existing medical schools as partners offering clinical placements. The course hopes to accept its first students in 2002 and will aim to widen access by providing an alternative route into medicine.

General practitioners argued that health care in rural areas is worse than national averages, and that those most in need were those who found it most difficult to access services. Dr Thuran Sen Gupta, an Australian representative from James Cook University, described how a college has been set up in Australia specifically to meet the needs of the rural population. Research has shown that students recruited from the rural community are much more likely to return to rural areas to practice. The school is able to adjust its entrance requirements to ensure numbers recruited from this background make up a significant proportion of the intake.

Graham Buckley, secretary of ASME, said, "We decide what we want a doctor to be and fit it around the community. Perhaps it's time we built the curriculum around the community instead."

Jason O'Neale Roach, studentBMJ


studentBMJ 2000;08:259-302 August ISSN 0966-6494