Joe, Medicine

It has been an incredible life experience

I am currently in my final year at Plymouth Medical School and I can honestly say that this very nurturing and intimate environment has allowed me to feel completely ready to work as a doctor.

It has been an incredible life experience and it is clear Plymouth and its staff work endlessly to promote compassion, empathy and real-life skills to become top-quality clinicians in the NHS.

I have found the BMBS course here in Plymouth a fantastic way to develop my problem-solving skills and to build on my team-working. This is clear from day one where the problem-based learning sessions allowed me to work with my peers to explore a huge variety of clinical scenarios.

It was during these sessions that I learned how to start thinking like a doctor and this has been a massive help throughout medical school to be able to deal with clinical placements on the wards and in the community where we are faced with real-life problems daily.

Plymouth and its team of lecturers are incredible at broadening our horizons through encouraging wider activities and I have become involved in some great extra-curricular opportunities, including both local and global health initiatives.

However, something I have become passionate about is diversity and equality whilst being at Plymouth. I have joined their Athena Swan group which works to recognise and celebrate good practice in higher education and medicine towards gender equality.

I feel very passionate about making a positive change for the future and Plymouth medical school is really good at encouraging students to get involved and make these changes with constant support.

They are definitely student-focused and make every effort to commit to their students’ progress by making them part of the team. Due to the benefit of being a smaller medical school, I have been lucky enough to get to know my peers and make great friendships along the way, who I know will be life-long ones.

I have also been grateful for getting involved with the promotion of getting to work alongside great clinicians and teachers to develop our curriculum and communicate a student perspective on the way we learn and how to improve this for future years.

I would recommend Plymouth Medical school to anyone who wants to become a great doctor to come to where they make every effort to encourage wider, integrated learning.