Few matriculants leave school armed with the certainty that for the next six years they are ready to commit to studying medicine. Becoming a doctor is a life-changing decision and not all 17-year olds have the confidence to make this choice.
The Graduate Entry Medical Pro-gramme at the University of Witwatersrand, offers an alternative route to studying medicine and creates the opportunity for matric ulants to explore other areas of interests before settling on a medical degree.
This programme caters for graduate students who have completed a degree but would like to cross over to medicine. In the past these graduates were forced to start from scratch and go back to the first year of medicine. The new programme allows graduates to join up with medical students in the third year, saving them two years. For matriculants, this means that, instead of jumping right into a medical degree, they can first complete another degree that they are interested in, confident that they will be able to cross over to medicine at a later stage.
The medical degree has been reorganised so that these graduate students can join the third-year medical students without a hitch. The third to sixth years have been restructured into an integrated curriculum that includes early clinical exposure, small group learning and self-study, as well as the more traditional lectures and laboratory practical sessions, all supported by many computer delivered resources.
Professor Max Price, dean of the faculty of health sciences, says: ‘The graduates joining in third year receive an additional introductory course before the start of the year to cover the principles of subjects covered in second year. Students begin dealing with patients within a few weeks of starting third year.”
Graduates must have first-year credits in biology, physics and chemistry, but these do not need to be part of a science degree. They could be picked up in the course of a BA, engineering or commerce degree, for example. ‘The students do not need mathematics as a credit if they have done higher grade mathematics in school,” says Price. Student who have not done mathematics at school should do it as a credit during their under-graduate study. He says candidates will be judged on the marks they achieve in the first degree — they must have achieved at least a 60% average in the subjects taken in their final year.
The programme also caters for previously disadvantaged students who wish to enter the medical profession. ‘There is a very small pool of African students that have higher grade matric maths, and this constrains the increase in the number of black doctors nationally. This programme helps them to level the playing field,” says Price. African matriculants who do not meet the criteria for medicine can complete another degree and cross over to medicine.