ASMEBITESIZE: How do medical schools differ and does it matter?

Friday 10th July 2020 12:00 NOON

Medical schools differ. Whether those differences matter is however unclear.

As part of our ASME Bitesize programme ASME President, Derek Gallen was joined by Chris McManus (University College London), John Cookson (University of Worcester) and Oliver Devine (University College London) to discuss and debate whether medical schools differ and whether it matters. They discussed and referred to two papers recently published in BMC Medicine...

1. The Analysis of Teaching of Medical Schools (AToMS) survey: an analysis of 47,258 timetabled teaching events in 25 UK medical schools relating to timing, duration, teaching formats, teaching content, and problem-based learning

Access Paper 1

2. Exploring UK medical school differences: the MedDifs study of selection, teaching, student and F1 perceptions, postgraduate outcomes and fitness to practise

Access Paper 2

Please click on the button below to access the webinar video

Webinar Video

If you are unable to watch the video a transcript is available by clicking here

Please note a follow up to this session will take place on Wednesday 7th October at 12 noon. Click here for more details

Chris McManus

Chris McManus is Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London.

Chris trained as a doctor in Cambridge and Birmingham, doing house jobs in Birmingham and County Durham, and then a PhD on the neuropsychology of cerebral lateralisation. A series of lectureships in the ever-reorganising University of London eventually led him to his present post. Chris' medical education research began at St. Mary's in collaboration with the late Peter Richards and involved large-scale cohort studies of medical school applicants in 1980, 1985 and 1990. The cohorts are still being followed up. Since 1996 Chris has also been educational advisor to the MRCP (UK), on which he has carried out much research. Currently Chris is involved with UKMED, the United Kingdom Medical Education Database, which is allowing a range of important research questions to be answered.

John Cookson

John Cookson was brought up in Gloucestershire and qualified in medicine from Birmingham.  After house posts he spent a number of years as a lecturer and senior lecturer in medicine in Zimbabwe involved in clinical work, teaching and research.  His MD thesis was on various aspects of asthma in the black population, showing, amongst other things, the seasonal nature of the problem and the links to disturbed immunology.

He then returned to the UK as consultant physician in general and respiratory medicine in Leicester where he practiced for many years.  During this time he took on several successive educational roles as college tutor, clinical tutor, associate post-graduate dean and clinical sub-dean for the medical school.  He was appointed to an honorary chair in Clinical Education.  He then moved as Foundation Professor of Medical Education and Undergraduate Dean to help set up the new Hull York Medical School.  He also assisted in a new school in Botswana. His main research interests in medical education have been in curriculum design and assessment.  He now works as Development Dean for the prospective Three Counties Medical School based at the University of Worcester

Oliver Devine

Oliver Devine is a postdoctoral MB/PhD student in the penultimate year of the MBBS at University College London.

Oliver completed his preclinical training at Keele University before intercalating in Clinical Sciences at the University of Birmingham. Having caught the research bug, he transferred to UCL join the MB/PhD programme, recently completing his PhD in the basic biology of human ageing under the supervision of Professor Arne Akbar. With hands-on experience of three different medical schools, Oliver became interested in how schools differ and whether it matters. In 2015 he formed the Medical Student Investigators Collaborative (MSICo.org), a group of 180+ students and junior doctors whose flagship studies AToMS and MedDifs have sought to address these questions. He is the Chair of the FMLM Medical Student Group and sits on the FMLM Council.