There was an interesting discussion going on in The Student Room (Barts and The London)

When the agreement between the Malta government and Barts and The London was signed LAST YEAR (shame on us in the Maltese media, I must say, for letting this one slip past us as a footnote of little significance), there was an interesting discussion on the internet forum The Student Room – link below.

The two most noteworthy points brought up are that the course fees will be around 35,000 euros a year, which is more expensive than the London school, while the course itself will by definition have to be inferior. This is because a key part of medical training is exposure to patients ‘in the field’ – which is why medical schools exist only in conjunction with teaching hospitals.

The point made is that medical students will not have sufficient exposure to patients on an island as tiny as Gozo, where the hospital is about as busy as a town clinic, and that the proposed new school is sold as being ‘in Malta’, which it is if you take Malta to mean the state, except that it is not on the main island of Malta and nowhere near the main general (teaching) hospital.

While I – typically – saw the main insurmountable problem of putting young medical students on Gozo as the fact that the place is wrist-slittingly dull beyond description and no young person would be able to tolerate it for a few months let alone five years, the related main problem with the training itself is that the hospital is not busy even for proper training.