"Graduate Entry Medicine does more than just bring people into medical studies at a later age and through a shorter course. It also approaches learning Medicine as an integrated, patient-focused professional study."
Philip Brown was one of the original founding members of the St George’s Graduate Entry Medicine course who helped seek approval for this ground-breaking four-year course to go ahead. In the 13 years he was at St George’s, he was Deputy Academic Registrar, then Curriculum Development Facilitator, and from 1999-2004 Academic Registrar. He spoke to us to share his reflections on the course and what he has gone on to do since.
What did it feel like being part of a course that was the first of its kind in the UK?
When Robert Boyd first asked Sean Hilton and the curriculum development team to develop the course in 1996, at first it felt like an unwelcome distraction from the new five-year undergraduate curriculum we were only just implementing. But the excitement of starting with a blank canvas and working with a group of people who were totally committed to breaking the mould of medical education in the UK soon overcame that.
We somehow found time to develop the first ideas, write the plan and then build the team which went on to develop the course. The years I spent working on the Graduate Entry Programme were without a doubt the most exciting, fulfilling and worthwhile part of my career, and I am proud to have helped bring it about.”
How has the Graduate Entry Medicine programme changed since you first started as a member of the team?
In 1996-98 we worked on a proposal for a three-year programme for graduates in any discipline. Possibly rightly, the GMC Education Committee threw that out, although they were incorrectly sceptical about how non-science graduates could study Medicine in a shorter course.
At that time, in 1998, three of the team, including myself, were visiting Australia to study Graduate Entry Medicine courses there, and we came back enthused by a vision of how a radical integrated curriculum based on adult learning principles could work – and re-drew our plans accordingly.
Once I had helped steer the proposal through GMC and funding council approval, my focus was on assembling the team to construct and deliver the course, and that team, ably led by Peter McCrorie, naturally went on to refine and improve it. My role in the programme reduced from 2001, but I recall the excitement of those first few years, seeing the course start to shape the next generation of a different kind of medical student.
What have you gone on to do since?
Since leaving St George’s in 2004, I have carried out freelance work on various medical education projects, including new curricula in Ireland. I have also spent more than 12 years working with the Australian Council for Educational Research on new selection tools for healthcare education across the UK and Ireland.
Since 2013 I have moved away from educational work into regulatory work, sitting on fitness to practise tribunals for doctors and dentists. I’ve been trying to semi-retire for several years, and my wife and I moved to rural Herefordshire in 2007, where we have thrown ourselves in to community life and I am deeply involved in running the local flying club and airfield. I’ve added Parish Clerk and Air Traffic Services to my CV and in local council administration and aviation I have found two areas even more complex and highly regulated than universities and medical education.
Recently I have been involved as a Founder of a radical new university initiative in engineering education, the New Model in Technology and Engineering in Hereford (NMITE), whose first students started this month. I was keen to support this initiative which seeks to educate tomorrow’s Engineers in a radically different hands-on integrated curriculum with no didactic learning.
What are some of your earliest memories of the course?
In between all the other meetings and projects we were busy with, I remember the original development team of six meeting in my office at 5pm every Thursday with a bottle of wine to scope out the earliest proposals. That, and our study visit to Melbourne and Sydney, sticks in my mind, as does the memorable dinner at which Pat Hughes and I persuaded Peter McCrorie to come to St George’s (with little difficulty).
What was the best thing about being part of the Graduate Entry Medicine programme team?
The initial development team was an outstanding group of individuals who had been colleagues for several years, and being able to ‘build our own medical school’ almost was an exciting privilege. It also coincided with me undertaking my Masters in Higher and Professional Education, and I was able to draw on my historical research background as well as those studies and the GEP project to write my MA thesis on graduate entry programmes as a new model of medical education.
Why would you recommend studying Graduate Entry Medicine?
The seed of the Graduate Entry Programme was sown at a conference on selection to medical education which we organised in 1996 (Choosing Tomorrow’s Doctors). Many of the speakers at that landmark event, including the educationist Baroness Tessa Blackstone and the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, set out the challenges facing medical education at that time.
A common theme was the need to re-think the attributes of those coming into medicine, and how we could encourage a more mature and diverse entry. Professional education such as learning medicine is a hybrid of higher education and technical learning, requiring mature organisational skills and a clear commitment. Although many young people possess these, the pressured challenges of medical education sit well on a foundation of having ‘learnt how to learn’ and the time to develop that commitment and maturity. But Graduate Entry Medicine does more than just bring people into medical studies at a later age and through a shorter course. It also approaches learning Medicine as an integrated, patient-focused professional study, using one’s fellow-learners as much as the teachers and curriculum materials provided. As such, it is the best possible foundation for a lifetime of learning.