New breed of doctors to hit the wards

Students from one of the UK's first new medical schools for 30 years have graduated this summer in Norwich.

The joint venture University of East Anglia (UEA) School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice was established with the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital as part of a national expansion of medical student numbers in the UK. It admitted its first medical students in September 2002.

UEA, together with Peninsula Medical School at the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth were the first new medical schools to be established in the country since 1972.

Upholding the university’s famous Do Different motto, the forward-thinking UEA Medical School created a new system of training its students. The training programme is clinically-oriented from the very beginning, with students coming face-to-face with patients from the second week of their first year. The innovative course also takes a thematic approach to teaching with students exploring, for example, ‘The Blood’ as a theme that is followed across the five years of study.

“Our aim from the beginning was to produce doctors whose primary focus would be the patient. We have emphasised the bedside skills of clinical examination and communication and we are confident that the new doctors will be a real asset to the NHS,” said Prof Sam Leinster, head of the School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice.

Graduating UEA medic Dr Leigh Bissett said: “I will leave UEA with a determination to do a great job and to do the best for my patients, whether that’s going that extra mile to make them comfortable or fighting for a health service which is not perfect but amongst the finest assets we have in the UK.”

A total of 94 students collected their degrees at the UEA Medical School’s graduation ceremony on Tuesday July 10.