Candidates for a career in medicine should be a minimum 23 years of age and have at least one year's work experience, an expert in medical education has said.
Dr Christopher Cowley of the School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice at the University of East Anglia said older, more arts-oriented and better rounded applicants would make better medical students and happier doctors.
Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Dr Cowley said he would like medical students to be at least 23 years old before they start studying medicine. But contrary to plans for graduate-entry courses in the Republic, he does not want applicants to have completed a first degree.
Earlier this year, the Government approved the expansion of medical education in the State, to include for the first time a new graduate-entry programme to medicine. Some 240 of the additional 420 training places are to be made available to graduates of honours bachelor degree programmes in any discipline. An expert group is currently developing an aptitude test as part of the selection process for the four- year graduate-entry courses.
Dr Cowley said his main reason for not having a degree requirement for the older applicant was not to disadvantage those from less affluent backgrounds: "This is why I would have a raised minimum age, but without the degree requirement, so that a person can work full- time for a few years between secondary and tertiary study."
As part of their work experience, he proposed that aspirant medical students spend one year working in a healthcare or voluntary sector organisation so they acquire a grounding in the type of environment and ethos in which they would work as doctors. "It would be an important lesson in working as part of a team, in discovering the less glamorous side of medicine and even in acquiring some humility," he said.
In a separate proposal, Dr Cowley said extra points should be awarded for an A level in English literature on the basis that it improved imagination and empathy and the ability to discuss complex ethical issues: "In addition, the study of English literature improves the communication skills of pupils by encouraging them to be more precise in their choice of words, more sensitive to the resonances of words and intonation, and more sensitive to the situation and relationship in which the communicators find themselves."
Commenting on Dr Cowley's proposals, Prof Tom O'Dowd, professor of primary care and public health at Trinity College Dublin, said he agreed with the argument for competency in arts. "Going into medicine with a good grounding in English literature or a foreign language would produce a more rounded doctor. But hand in hand with arts you have to have a good grounding in science." However, Prof O'Dowd is in favour of graduate-entry noting that "one of the best ways of becoming an independent thinker is via the university system".