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You’ve got Aberdeen Medical School all wrong

From Dr Fiona Garton, head of GP teaching, University of Aberdeen

I feel compelled to respond to the negative feedback from a student on our course (‘The more I learn about general practice, the worse it looks’, pulsetoday.co.uk/education).

This article was based on one student’s opinions of a course for more than 500 students. He mentions our years one to three foundation of primary care course, which is not designed to teach general practice but provides a grounding in many other areas of medicine. General practice teaching starts in year four.

To say we stereotype general practice as the image of ‘Martin Clunes slurping tea’ when he has not yet experienced any placements is frankly flawed.

And to counter the comment ‘general practice lacks glamour’, we offer a unique remote and rural programme for a group of year four students, giving them an opportunity to learn winter mountain skills and pre-hospital treatment.