Anyone have experience of studying medicine in English in Europe?

[rickyrickygrimes]

I work in an international school in France. All the students are English / French bilingual, and I specifically advise students looking to study at university in English. I'm getting requests quite often from students who want to study medicine / vet, but they don't want to stay in France (where the system is brutal with competitive exams throughout). The problems is that the countries we usually send students to just don't work for medicine.
US & Canada - can't study medicine as an undergrad, they'd have to do a first degree and then take med as a postgrad. possibly, but it's a long haul / cost.
Netherlands - the only English-taught medicine course has recently been discontinued.
Ireland - insanely competitive. They'd need to get 21/20 in their Bac to have a chance.
UK - since Brexit they mostly qualify as international students = insane fees.

So increasingly they are asking me about studying medicine (and vet) in other European countries - Malta, Greece, Romania, Latvia among others. I understand the 'official' line - the degrees which have been approved by the EU should be accepted across the EU. The issue is being accepted to actually work as / register as a Dr in other countries after qualifying. I suspect that the UK would snap them up, while France is very very resistant to allowing Drs trained elsewhere to register.

Anyone got experience of these courses? And their post-qualification acceptance?

@DramaAlpaca snap! Where did your DN go? My DD was at Wroclaw (she actually started the course in Bulgaria but hated it there so moved after the second year).

Yes
And there would have been a reason why they were rejected from every single one.

They weren’t up to doing the course to a UK standard hence they had to look to Bulgaria.

@Weekendwatch I already said in my previous post, but it was about 7000 euros each a year. So much cheaper than the UK! And the cost of living was very much lower too, they both managed on £600 a month including accommodation, plus a little extra for doing some English teaching in their spare time.

There are many courses taught entirely in English, in European countries.

That’s fine for the coursework, but how does that work with the clinical training required? You would need the patients to converse in English surely?

The calibre of students will be poor if they’ll intake comprises of students who have been rejected from all options in the UK

@Somelast that is pretty blunt of you. They were in my opinion by that stage well up to standard, but the UK schools were looking at their A-level and GCSE results, which were As rather than A* in the most part, and ignoring what they had done since then, which I think is really shortsighted. They both knew when they finished school that they didn't quite have the grades for what they wanted to do, so did those other degrees first and worked really hard.

@HoppingPavlova if you read my posts I address that issue.

And they ignored a first class Masters in bio medical sciences?

@theDudesmummy i am not being blunt . It is the fact. Your daughters tried to get a place in the UK but none accepted them.

They were accepted in Bulgaria and Poland.

My point is…. There will be many more studying in these country tries because no UL uni would have them. The calibre won’t be to a high standard.

I could understood fluency from zero knowledge in 2 years if said person was immersed in the language all day and every day.

However 5 lessons a week? And the rest of the day all taught in English?

Well that is impressive to be fluent from zero within 2 years

@Somelast so by that logic anyone who trained outside the UK is inferior to those who did? I didn't even get all As in my equivalent of A-levels in the country where I went to school, but I got in at first try to med school, because they also looked at a lot of other attributes and successes I had. That is the point, I think the UK schools were being very shortsighted. The only possible thing these girls had against them was the lack of A*s at A-level. (I have had a very good career in the UK over the past thirty-five years, ending up as the senior consultant in an academic department in London, I don't see myself as low calibre).

The doctor one had a first class honours degree in biomed not a Masters. The vet one had a research Masters and had been published in Nature. None of that seemed to count.

There will be some UK students that have actively selected Bulgaria to study medicine despite being accepted by UK ones.

However vast the majority will be starting at Bulgaria having failed to secure a place in a UK uni. Fact. Like both your daughters for example.

so by that logic anyone who trained outside the UK is inferior to those who did?

well if they were rejected from every single UK institution they applied to and only went to an alternative simply because it accepted them…. Then yes. You DDs.

However some will have a UK offer on the table and actively want to go elsewhere. To Bulgaria? Not many.

Yes of course that is the case. My point is that I think the UK schools are turning away some high calibre candidates in the first place. I myself would never have got in under their specifications. Anyway, they have had no problem getting onto their training schemes in the UK and Greece now, so it's all water under the bridge, they had amazing experiences in central Europe and they both met their husbands while studying there, so I don't think they regret it at all! I also particularly loved visiting Wroclaw while DD was there, it's a wonderful place.

Your examples of high calibre students that didn’t secure a place at any UK university at all are you and your two daughters

When advising your students you’ll need to be careful with your language - no medical degree is quality assured by the EU. If a member state says it meets the minimum criteria in the MRPQ directive it is automatically accepted by other member states - but saying quality assured by the EU is misleading.

Also saying that the degrees in other countries are ‘accredited’ by the GMC can be misleading. Certain ones that are awarded by a UK university but taught abroad are but there are only a couple of them.

And you need to warn your students that the reference to 2028 in the BBC article is relevant (even if the article is incorrect saying the UK will re-examine its EU agreements). The UK currently automatically accepts EU degrees listed in the MRPQ directive but this only runs until 2028 when the UK government will make an independent decision whether to continue to do this (nothing to do with EU agreements). So if your students definitely want to practise in the UK they should take that into consideration (I.e after 2028 they may need to sit additional exams to get their European degree recognised in the UK).

St George's Hospital in London has an English taught Medicine Course in Cyprus - someone at my DC school has just completed their clinical and had a great time and it seemed very well taught. It is valid in the UK.

I didn't live in the UK, so never applied there but by present specifications, looking at what I got for my school leaving exams, I wouldn't have got in, no.

I am wondering now what you mean by "high calibre"? If you look at the "calibre" of the doctor that emerges from the end of it, I don't mean to boast but I have done extremely well in my decades-long career in London. And getting onto a surgical rotation in one of the largest hospitals and top universities in Greece is not that easy, I happen to know this to be true, so clearly they saw potential calibre enough in DD. My point again, what looks on paper like a "high calibre" student to a narrow viewpoint may not be what necessarily makes a "high calibre" doctor.

I guess I’m using Uk medical school admissions team as my guide on student calibre of those studying in Bulgaria because they failed to secure any place in the UK

@Somelast I find it quite xenophobic for you to say that people who did not get into schools in one particular country, the UK, because of particular narrow criteria, and trained elsewhere, will be lower "calibre" doctors than those who did. It is emphatically not true.

if you read my posts I address that issue

@theDudesmummy So, it relies on having to learn the native language including medical fluency, and being examined on this in order to pass to clinical. That seems a bit of a gamble as some people would be able to do this but others not (some of my kids were great with languages, others were not so good).

I am talking about UK students failing to get into a single UK institution and thus going to Bulgaria.

It is not Xenophobic to presume they will be a lower calibre student 🙄 than a UK peer who was accepted

i am not talking about other countries

And bear in mind…, not even close to total immersion as the entire course is taught in English. So it’s evening lessons

@PoorPhaedra that is interesting. I didn't know that it was going to change. My DDs had absolutely no problem registering with the GMC and RCVS, but that might be different into the future then?

@HoppingPavlova we did already know that they were good at languages, they had other languages already, one of which they were both totally fluent in. I did say to them at the beginning that I would have found the language aspect daunting, they brushed that off! (I am not equally good at languages!).