Last Friday, I was forwarded a document by an anonymous reader (whom I have to thank deeply for his contribution), according to which a memorandum of understanding had been signed between the University of Malta and St.George's.
This morning, I was able to verify the authenticity of that document (by being shown an original hard copy), so I can now post it here for the benefit of all the medical students who -like myself- are interested in the course and outcome of this collaboration :
19th February 2008
Dear Colleagues,
Further to my last letter, I write to inform you about the recent visit by delegates from St. George’s, University of London (SGUL).
As a result of this visit the Rector of the University of Malta has signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Malta and St. George’s, University of London. The MOU regulates discussions between the two parties with an eye to signing an Agreement by late Spring in order to launch an international four-year, graduate entry programme in 2009/2010 leading to a registerable medical qualification. It is hoped that this will be the first step in a long term partnership.
During their visit the visitors from St. George's met with various officials in Malta including the Prime Minister , the Minister for Education, Youth and Employment, the Minister of Health , Care of the Elderly and Community Care as well as the Deputy Leader of the Malta Labour Party and the shadow Minister for Education.
In addition they met with HE Mr Nicholas Archer, British High Commissioner, and senior members of the University and National Commission for Higher Education.
A visit to Mater Dei Hospital was arranged for the visitors to see the hospital and medical school as well as meet some senior members of the medical profession who were on duty there.
The visitors discussed a number of areas of possible cooperation including the establishment of a graduate entry medical education programme for international students alongside the existing University of Malta course. St. George’s has been successfully running graduate and undergraduate entry medical education programmes together for over seven years. SGUL was the first medical school in the British Isles to offer a Graduate Entry Programme. Its next intake will be 98 students. SGUL is the only independently-governed medical school in England. It is a premier educational establishment. St. George's gained an excellent score of 23 out of 24 in the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) inspection of medicine - the highest score of any London Medical School.
Further discussions are taking place and it is hoped that the proposed graduate entry programme would only be the start of a long-term relationship between the University of Malta and SGUL that would include postgraduate education.
SGUL offers a wide range of postgraduate programmes at certificate, diploma, masters and doctoral level that could complement the University of Malta's own postgraduate programmes. SGUL has approximately 5500 students, made up broadly of 1300 undergraduate medicine and bioscience students; 3700 health professions undergraduates in the joint faculty; 300 taught post-graduates, and 200 research students. A number of postgraduate qualifications are offered in conjunction with Kingston University in the Joint Faculty of Health & Social Care Science.
Future collaboration could also include combined research projects with joint applications for international research grants between the University of Malta and St. George's, University of London. SGUL is a major international research centre. SGUL came second in a Guardian (2007) newspaper league table of research papers and their impact, published in November 2007. Figures show that SGUL research papers had twice as much impact as the world average in terms of how often they were cited in peer-reviewed journals. SGUL beat Oxford and Cambridge, Imperial College London and University College London. In the last Research Assessment Exercise (2001) St George's was rated as conducting research of at least national excellence in the majority of its activities (with cardiovascular and respiratory epidemiology receiving flagged status). Work in the area of pre-clinical studies was considered to be of international excellence.
Research is also strong in basic medical sciences, particularly cell biology and molecular genetics. St George's research continues to be influential in the fields of medical epidemiology.
The research base at SGUL is further strengthened through its close proximity and interaction with St George's Healthcare NHS Trust and other hospitals.
These relationships provide unique opportunities for translational research that links basic science to clinical care.
Total research income was about €30 million last year and SGUL has recently been awarded $21 million as part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative. There are about 150 active researchers in permanent positions, with about 200 research assistants. There are 170 MPhil/PhD students and 120 MD/MS/MD(Res) students studying both in full-time and part-time mode in all divisions. There are a number of companies (including pharmaceutical companies) on site, that work collaboratively with researchers in SGUL. These include Antisoma, Onyvax, Richmond Pharmacology, Helperby Therapeutics and Phytofusion.
Finally, cooperation could extend to George's Healthcare NHS Trust including interchanges between students, postgraduates and hospital staff. SGUL shares its site with St George's Hospital in Tooting, one of the biggest NHS hospitals in the United Kingdom.
St George's Healthcare NHS Trust employs over 5,000 staff with 2,500 nurses and 800 physicians with over 1000 beds and trains over 4,000 healthcare professionals. The annual budget of the Trust is close to €500 million. The Trust provides the services of a district general hospital (secondary care) and specialist (tertiary care) hospital services from three sites.
The Rector has stated that this is a further step in the university's strategy of partnering with prestigious international educational institutions and would help realise the vision of Malta as an international preferred provider of quality higher education, the "Teacher of the Mediterranean". He has said that these partnerships enhance the University of Malta as well as the country as a whole.
I hope that you share my enthusiasm for such a joint venture which would be a true partnership between two. equals where the responsibilities and benefits would be shared. This is unlike the franchises previously proposed by other institutions. I augur that such a partnership would open opportunities to all members of the faculty as well as all the other doctors working at Mater Dei Hospital and beyond. I envisage that this would be a superb way of improving the currently high standards achieved as all programmes both offered locally as well as the one offered as a result of the partnership would run in parallel and not in direct competition.
I am calling an Extraordinary Meeting of the Faculty Board to be held on Tuesday 4th March 2008 at 11 am at the University of Malta Medical School Board Room at Mater Dei Hospital. The subject of the Future of the Medical School will be discussed as the only item on the Agenda. I look forward to seeing Faculty members at that meeting.
I shall keep you informed of progress with regards to the discussions with St. George's.
Yours sincerely,
Professor G LaFerla
I was very happy to read that the co-operation will not just be a money-making venture but will also cater for the improvement of the normal five-year UoM medical course and for the establishment of urgently needed postgraduate medical training programmes.
The only thing I am still wondering about is what measures the faculty is planning to take to avoid an over-crowding of MDH by medical students. I understand that it might be too early for that sort of detail to be publicised, but it would surely make me feel better if MMSA was to raise that issue in the upcoming faculty board meeting...
11 comments:
good news, thanks for keeping us updated!
indeed it is, and hats off to the medical school for keeping the students informed as to what is going on. A far cry from the RCSI debacle a few months ago....
Is it true that a senior member of SGUL approached by the medical school is a member of RCSI? If this is true, what confused message is the medical school sending to both institutions (by wanting one but not the other)?
There is nothing tangible in the SGUL memo pasted on this blog. For me both agreements still do nothing much for Maltese med students... Morover, they just nibble form our precious clinical resources...
How will an 'international four-year, graduate entry programme in 2009/2010 leading to a registerable medical qualification' help us???
I don't see how a person can be working for both SGUL (a public UK medical school) and RCSI (a private Irish medical school), but I don't know anything more specific about what you're saying.
Also, to the best of my knowledge, the RCSI never proposed a joint venture with UoM. Read through older posts on this blog, and you will see that what they want is to establish their own medical college in Malta and get open MDH access. Resource sharing with UoM is something they are willing to negotiate later.
Anyway... In my opinion, and I've mentioned this many times in the past, the main benefit of both proposals for Malta is that many of us will finally be able to do our postgraduate medical training without leaving the island.
Sadly, foreign expertise seems to be required for that (otherwise we would have definitely done it already - apparently it started being discussed long before any of us were born) and sharing our clinical resources is simply the price to pay.
OK, so now there seems to be an agreement that "the main benefit of both proposals for Malta is that many of us will finally be able to do our postgraduate medical training (PGMT) without leaving the island." Even though Dr. Walker says that "comments about post graduate training are not relevant here, as I find it hard to understand how the RCSI proposal will significantly influence the future of postgraduate training in Malta".
SGUL’s Postgraduate Courses are certificates, diplomas, masters and doctoral level programmes in the limited specialities (Forensics, Psychiatry and Imagining). These are not enough for you to become a specialist (awarded a CCST). So this will do absolutely nothing for Maltese post-graduate training leaving the junior-doctor brain-drain at 100%.
You (The Foreigner) criticised the RCSI offer as it does not offer a complete range of post grad training. At least the RCSI deal offered post-graduate programmes leading to a CCST in Surgery, Emergency Medicine, Radiology, Intensive Care Medicine and Sports and Exercise Medicine. This will reduce bulk of the brain drain (more then "by keeping 25 MD graduates per year on the island instead of the current 20" as you said). This is why I sent you the SGUL document on Friday, so students could compare.
I think you as medical students should speak to some junior doctors before you make your assumptions.
The UOM and the Medical School had no right to interfere with the RCSI proposals. That was unfair on the current junior doctors and its own medical students who are the soon-to-be-junior-doctors.
Now that we're saying that the main benefit of both proposals is local PGMT, it's clear that the RCSI proposal is superior in this regards. It is not a complete solution. It is impossible to partner with an institution that offers a complete proposal, but its part of the solution. More institutions should be approached for the remainder of the specialities (Medicine, O&G, ophthalmology, ortho, paeds, and path).
The crux of the matter is that both proposals should not exclude one another. The medical school and its students should be protected, and this was the task of UOM, not to back-stab a proposal that had clear positive influence on local PGMT of important specialities.
First of all, please do not confuse my own opinions with those expressed by visitors of this blog (like Dr.Walker) in their comments.
The RCSI proposal (meaning the text which you shared with us previously) mentions only three PGMT programmes which are to be held in Malta. And the number of local students that those programmes will be open to is unknown (especially if there's significant interest from foreign students).
So I think it's reasonable on my part to doubt that those three PGMT programmes will manage to reverse the brain drain.
The UoM/SGUL cooperation haven't really announced anything about how many and which PGMT programmes they are planning to offer.
But, knowing that the UoM is a public university (so making profit is not its target) and that the people at the UoM medical school really want the brain drain solved (as it affects their own professional lives) I would be completely irresponsible if I was to rush to negative conclusions before I even got any information.
Still, I can see the point you're making, and do hope that MMSA will put that question forward in the upcoming faculty board meeting and share the answers with the rest of us !
I think it's a good thing that there will be more postgrad opportunities available here in malta. But what worries me is that the university will be blinded by the advantages and not try to take action on the possible disadvantages. For example will the UoM have to increase lecturers' pays to compete with the other foreign school's wages? because I presume that they offer higher wages and we might loose some of the staff at the UoM.
First of all you cannot seriously believe that we should not allow another school to come in because it would mean that we would have to pay our lecturers a decent salary. Pay them more, dont try and block any competition (in an employment sense of course). Secondly I would not expect the new school to poach too many of our lecturers as it is not like its a huge university but a small private school.
I agree with Info on demand about the fact that UoM should technically have no say in whether RCSI comes to Malta or not, and i really do not see why so many people say it should. I agree on the fact that it is not necessarily one or the other so I do not see why so many people are arguing against one or the other. Mater Dei is a public hospital so Im afraid everyone will have to coexist.
Foreigner I am confused by your position on the "Brain drain" situation as you have previously said its irrelevant. How would you imagine these two proposal affecting this drain?
My opinion (and certainly not my 'position' - I am not anyone important you know !) is what I have written just above.
The RCSI has promised to hold only three PGMT courses in Malta. I don't think that such a limited offer of courses will have a significant effect on the number of UoM graduates that will opt to stay and train in Malta.
I hope that the people in the UoM medical faculty care more about the brain drain problem (since they are the ones who actually work in MDH, and need junior doctors in their firms) and will make sure that the UoM/SGUL project will offer a wider spectrum of PGMT possibilities.
However, this is an optimistic view coming from a UoM student and I could be proven wrong in the near future.
So if someone has more information (especially regarding what was discussed on today's faculty board meeting) could they please share ?
It is my understanding that the faculty board gave its complete support for the partnership with SGUL and that the negotiations are aimed to be completed by May 08. Also, MMSA representatives have been invited to a separate meeting with the Dean and the negotiating team. It seems to me that the university is doing its best to ensure that all strategic partners are keep fully informed.
Dear Information on demand
What evidence do you have that the University and the medical school are interfering with the RCSI proposal? As far as I know the RCSI representatives never offered the university any opportunity to partner. Therefore the RCSI initiative has nothing to do with the university at all. Their negotiations are with the government of Malta.
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