Bristol MEDICAL School placements and accomodation

[Cratos]

I wondered if anybody who had the experience could offer any advice or top tips about Bristol MEDICAL School placements accomodation arrangements. My DS is about to select his options. We didn't realise he wouldn't need accomodation in Bristol for the duration of placements (that may even means the whole year if he has 2 out placements). Although it would be good to keep a place in Bristol for the weekends or holidays it seems like that might be an expensive option. Keeping a place all year to only used it at the weekends etc. What did your DC s do? Thank you

Ds is Bristol med. In the first 2 years students are based in Bristol itself and do the usual halls, house shares that all unis do. From years 3 to 5 the usual pattern seems to be half a year out based in an academy with free accommodation and half a year based in Bristol.
Some students get together and do house share swaps so each only renting 1 place for half the year. Others commute to and fro daily from their academy with plenty of car sharing going on between students (most but not all the academies are just about close enough to do so).
Ds was told that he could apply to do two 'out' academy placements in a year and so get free accommodation all 1 year and then be entirely Bristol based for the next year. To do this he had to show evidence of his personal circumstances and why it was needed (e.g. financial, caring, single parent etc ds is not all these!). He has friends who also applied who were turned down for this as their reasons weren't good enough (they'd got a dog!) so it's not automatic.
Feel free to PM if I'm not making sense.

My daughter is year 4 at Bristol currently doing two "out" placements so hasn't needed Bristol based accomodation this year. Be aware that Bristol is very expensive for accommodation and there also isn't enough of it - so the students really need to be organised to get a half decent house. From what I can tell living out is a bit of a double edged sword - you save substantial money, but you are generally in quite quiet towns so it depends how much social life you can create. I'd say having a house in Bristol as well as living out is the ideal scenario as you get the (brilliant) Bristol social life - but this does feel like quite a luxury in terms of cost (8-10k a year) as it's not strictly necessary.

@Haffdonga thank you very much for your helpful response. I am hoping that he will find a friend to do a house share swap. This sounds like a good option. It would be nice to save some money since my other DS will also be at Uni at the same time. He wouldn't qualify for personal circumstances since he gets a minimum maintenance loan.
Could I please ask you if you know how finances work for the Intercalation or Masters year and also for year 5 ? I think the NHS pays for the university fees for the additional years (Year 5 and Intercalation) instead of Student finance. Is this a loan ? Does it need to be paid back ? I have a feeling that he is interested in intercalating.

@Djchickpea thank you very much for sharing your daughter's experience. My son really enjoys his life at Bristol at the moment and he is in a lovely accommodation currently. I wouldn't like his mental health to be affected negatively. It looks like students will be moving around a lot which is not easy but I understand why it is required. How many days/weeks does your daughter need to return to Bristol for exams etc this year? What kind of temporary accommodation she may need for that?

If they need to be Bristol temporarily there are outlying towns with cheaper hotels etc that can work out better than proper accommodation, we had a few medics at the hotel at the end of my road for a couple of weeks back in the summer, bus to the city stops outside (slow but direct)

I have a friend whose DS is currently 5th yr Medic at Bristol and he has had to live out in the sticks in grim accommodation which is essentially on-site with the hospital he's working in. He hated that, said it was soulless and relentless.

@Cratos ds2 (Sheffield med) intercalated with a masters so I've had parental experience of the finance system

As I understand (and I may well not understand so apologies if I'm wrong!)
if you intercalate, the way its funded depends on whether you do a Batchelors or Masters degree in that intercalation year (both were on offer when ds was at Sheff).

• If you do a BSc the uni fees and maintenance are included as an extra year part of your first degree so you'll pay back the same amount of loan when you start working each month regardless how much you are earning
• If you do an Msc when you intercalate this is paid for by a separate masters loan (so my ds now has to pay 2 loan payments each month from his pay packet, one for med degree, one for masters)

Student finance usually pays for up to 4 years of a first degree, so the NHS bursary kicks in to pay for the 5th year of medicine. If you don't intercalate it pays your final 5th year. If you do intercalate it pays your 5th and 6th years.

The bursary isn't a loan so doesn't need to be paid back but be aware that it's shockingly low (roughly 3k for the whole year) so it nowhere near covers most students' living costs and they might need to save up or get a job in their earlier years to subsidise this final year if their parents can't help (crazy!)

But - there is talk of changing the system with final year med students being able apply for a student loan as well or instead of the bursary soon Hopefully this will have changed by the time your ds needs to worry about it. I'm just hoping it changes by next year for mine!

Just to add, having done the rounds of many med school open days, nearly all med courses involve placements outside the uni city/ town for part of the course. Bristol is very much not alone in this and you just can't plan or worry about where or if you'll be sent to the furthest away or grottiest hospital accommodation - that's NHS medicine I'm afraid! Most students are happy and make the most of wherever they end up. Some med schools place their students 'out' for a full year, others for shorter stints. Some provide free accommodation, others don't.
My suspicion is that the Bristol system of 6 months in /6 months out was developed long before accommodation costs spiralled in the city so it wasn't such a problem that most student accommodation leases are a year long. Now they're using the option of doing 2 'out' placements as a selling point (a year's free accommodation!) but hadn't made clear (to ds at least) that this is not an automatic choice.

Sorry mistake in my previous post -
if you intercalate with a BSc you'll pay back the same amount of student loan each month regardless of what you OWE (not regardless what you earn)!

Must stop MNing in my lunch hour!

That is interesting. Thank you @mamagogo1

Sounds like a character building exercise for medics. The placements can be tough I think but part of the experience of learning I guess. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you very much @Haffdonga hope you managed to enjoy your lunch hour. I will study your response carefully. The good thing is that university tuition fees are paid by the NHS for Y5 and the intercalation year if I understood this correctly and these tuition fees don't need to be paid back. I saw that there was a mention about a reduced maintenance loan for medics. I wondered if this was new. I hope things will be better for all of them soon. Have a nice weekend.

@cratosMy daughter said that she hardly ever HAS to go to Bristol this year, probably a couple of times a term for exams etc. However she still tries to go to Bristol one a week, so she can catch up with friends - she just tends to crash on the sofa I think.

That is very helpful to know. Thank you very much.

DD was at Bristol.

Placements were about 50% in Bristol, 50% out. Accommodation out was provided free of charge. (Better than, say, Plymouth which also had placements at Taunton hospital but whose students were expected to find their own accomodation in the town.)

Bristol seemed fairly accommodating. Less well off students could asked for more out-placements thereby saving money. Similarly some, for health or other reasons requested in-placements.

There were complaints about some of the accommodation but there was no obligation to live in it. What I saw seemed fine. DD had two in-placements for her fourth year and two out for her fifth. She ended up renting a small flat on her own for her fourth year, as she had intercalated in London and then found that many of her friends had decided to stay put in their lockdown flats rather than seek to move. It is worth noting that finals at Bristol are at the end of the fourth year so it is worth being sure your accommodation is suitable for study.

Though actually the flat turned out not to cost a lot more than a shared student rental the deal was that she would live in University supplied accommodation for her fifth year placements. It would have been fine, but instead a friend offered her a cheap room in Bristol, and having missed two years of university social life because of lockdown, she wanted to have a final year with her friends. .

One thing to look out for is that GP placements can happen anywhere, with seemingly no logic. So commuting from Bristol for her final year worked in that the hospital was in one direction, the GP placement was a long way in the other.

Another tip is to consider first year accomodation. City centre and Clifton work better for medics. On GP day DD was having to get up at 5.30 in order to catch the bus into the city that allowed her to catch the once an hour bus to her GP placement. Unfortunately her flatmates were keen clubbers and would return at 2.30am wake her and eat everything in the fridge including her breakfast and packed lunch. She ended up getting a small car which she still has a decade later, and which made life a lot easier. That said probably only one in four medics drove, and DD was generally able to fill her car with three passengers, and claim back from the medical school.

@Needmoresleep thank you for sharing your experience. We were very pleased to learn that placement accommodation was provided free of charge.
I forgot that finals are at the end of Year 4 in Bristol. Thank you for reminding me and thank you for all the great tips. My DS in Year 2 at the moment. He stayed in Clifton last year. I think perhaps I have seen your advice before and he decided to stay in Clifton which has worked really well. He is near the university for Year 2 as well. I think he will hear back about his placements for next year soon. Then we need to plan what to do.

Thanks.
I would also suggest it is worth taking a flexible approach.

As it was the placement flats DD was in were fine. She was in a fun one as lockdown struck where they would go to the gym together after placement and then onto Morrison to hover up yellow label products, cooking what they had acquired together. That said lots disappeared at weekends to sofa surf back in Bristol. Not everyone was so lucky. One flat had disagreements over whether it was acceptable to cook bacon or invite male friends into the flat for a meal, which seemed to cause everyone a level of anxiety.

Lockdown struck in the middle of DDs third year and then she did an intercalation in London, so had been 18 months without seeing friends, and with exams at the end of her first year back, only to find that some of her closest friends were headed off to Yeovil whereas she was going in the other direction. When the offer of a cheap room in Bristol came up it was too tempting to refuse.

In terms of driving, medics probably need to learn sometime. DD would have really struggled with F2 if she did not drive, though again placement accommodation for some of the more remote hospitals in her Deanery seems to have been possible. She had a very small car, and always had a full load, and so probably covered her running costs. She had to wait about four months for one of a limited number of parking permits in the City Centre, but didn't mind parking it elsewhere and cycling/walking to fetch it.