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?

It's not necessarily not being up to doing the course in UK or Ireland or wherever. University acceptances are basically about supply and demand. If very few people want to do the course, lower qualifications well be required for entry and vice versa. If entry requirements go below a certain level then you will probably get a reasonable number of students who will fail. However, when entry requirements are high, many who fail to reach them would still be very capable of doing well on the course.

There are currently courses with high entry requirements that are relatively easy and not terribly demanding and courses with low requirements that are difficult and demanding purely because of the vagaries of supply and demand.

We are talking about medicine and veterinary science here.

Not RTFT but I know of someone who studied Medicine in Ireland and someone who studied Medicine in Spain.

My daughter definitely found getting in to medical school (ie A Levels) harder than the course content for the first few years. But every medical school is different and hers was quite clinically based.

One other thing about studying abroad is that you then don't have the experience of working in the healthcare system of your home country if you want to return and work there. You can't underestimate how much time UK students spend in NHS hospitals. If there were two equal candidates for a job it's not unreasonable to think they would prefer them one trained in the NHS system.

Of course this may not be relevant to the students the OP is mentoring.

Yes and the exact same applies to them as to other courses. If there is a high demand, the universities will require higher entry qualifications, if there is a lower demand, the requirements will reduce. Medicine and veterinary tend to always have a high demand. However, demand does fluctuate and the number of places fluctuates. Both of those impact on entry requirements.

My point about difficult courses with low entry requirements and vice versa was to point out that entry requirements are not necessarily reflective of a student's ability to do well on a course.

@theDudesmummy my DN went to Warsaw. Didn't like it much, but got there in the end!

@DramaAlpaca oh! I like Wroclaw much better than Warsaw as a city so I am glad my DD went there.

I guess they must have done because their courses weren't taught in English.

I know they both did intensive language study every day as part of their courses.

The one who studied in East Germany was there when the Wall came down and was able to transfer to a uni in West Germany for her Masters course so she must have spoken it well enough for them to accept her.

Have you seen the calibre of students who are rejected from UK med schools? I volunteer with young adults and I've been shocked at the pupils who are rejected often after more than one attempt - high grades, good test scores and relevant experience, often slogging their guts out as HCAs as well as studying hard.. There just aren't enough places to go round.

@StayClass , One of the ones I mentioned was rejected because of not enough spaces.
A* student all the way through school, one parent working in the field, etc. Fortunately, got a place abroad and the parents had the means to support the student.

Thank you @StayClass and @NormaSears . I think the PP who has repeatedly called my DDs (and incidentally also me) "low calibre" is failing to grasp that. My DDs were the type of people who in my day would have been more than a a shoe-in for med school: A across the board for GCSEs and A-levels, silver DofE, years of St John's Ambulance, music grades, relevant work experience and volunteering in more than one overseas country etc etc. (I had none of those things, or their equivalent in the country I went to med school in. I had been a school library prefect and that was about it! I still flew through med school and became a very successful doctor). The fact that there aren't enough places now for all the people who would make excellent doctors is the problem.

PS, as I said upthread, they also had undergrad and postgrad degrees in relevant fields, the med school one had a first for biomed. Still no place in the UK.

Did they have interviews for the places in the UK?

Interviews can be down to UCAT/GMAT (or BMAT) scores. So can have a million A stars and not get an interview. And graduate medicine has 45 applicants per place.
Vet med has about 11 applicants per place. And selection is down to pre interview forms and questionnaires. So again can have perfect grades and not get an interview.
They need more than just academics (although need that too).

I'd be wary of studying abroad if want to work in the UK. Already jobs are asking for NHS experience and BMA pushing for UK Grad priority due to there being unemployed doctors. Quite a lot of them.

How many uni rejected them both?

OP

Of interest?

https://imu.edu.my/pathways/#medicine

I have not checked out the fees but Malaysia has a British style of medical education. Scope for 2.5 years in Malaysia and clinical in the UK, Malta, NZ or Australia. This would get round the language issue at clinical, whilst entry requirements are BBB at A level.

A Malaysian friend's child took a similar route with pre-clinical in Malaysia then clinical in Ireland. This option seems to have disappeared, perhaps because of the pressure on medical school places in Ireland.

Instead and slightly intriguing....you can now do it the other way round. Pre-clinical in Ireland and clinical in Malaysia. Unless the latter is in private hospitals I can't see how the language works, though Bahasa is a lot easier than Bulgarian and many Malaysian doctors speak fluent English. www.rumc.edu.my/

The Caribbean is another place which provides a lot of English language medical education, though mainly aimed at North Americans.

Also have you looked at Buckingham, which is a private University? Fees are higher than the norm for British students, but perhaps lower than UK state Universities for international students. Four terms a year so you get done quicker. A friend's Australian niece is studying there and seems to be working hard and doing well. No problem then getting a job back in Australia. Degrees are awarded by a respectable UK medical school so accreditation is fine.

I still think the best option is to take the first year in France and line up other options as plan Bs. My preference would be Buckingham then Malaysia with clinical in the UK (or the other English speaking options).. Which does not mean that strong students do not graduate from Bulgaria and Romania, and that it is not possible to learn the local language to a good working level. I would just worry about the point (2027) when the UK starts reviewing the medical degrees it accepts. There will be growing pressure to protect jobs for UK medical school graduates, whilst treading carefully so as not to offend the very strong Indian doctor lobby. Graduates from Eastern European Universities could lose out. And as you suggest other EU countries who are expected to treat them equally have found ways of excluding them from professional associations etc.