Medical school application process should change

SCHOOL leavers seeking entry to medical school should be selected based on an interview as well as their Leaving Certificate results, the head of the country’s newest medicine course said yesterday.

Professor Paul Finucane, founding head of University of Limerick’s graduate medical school, was commenting on proposals to change the way in which medical students are chosen.

The Irish Examiner revealed in June that the new entry scheme would be open to those with at least 480 points in the Leaving Certificate, with scores to be considered in combination with results in an aptitude test of their suitability for a medical career.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin revealed yesterday that she believes those who get more than 550 out of 600 Leaving Certificate points will not be treated more favourably under new proposals to reduce pressure on school leavers seeking entry to limited medical school places.

However, one of the factors still being considered at the time was whether extra weighting would be given to those with higher Leaving Certificate grades.

Ms Hanafin said that, while those with points above the likely 480 cut-off for entry would be ranked higher for selection, no extra credit will be gained for having more than 550 points.

An aptitude test is also being proposed for the new entry methods from 2009, with the test likely to be taken around Easter before students take their Leaving Certificate in June.

The changes were first proposed in the 2002 Programme for Government and Ms Hanafin’s predecessor set up a review group on the matter in 2003.

Prof Finucane said that, while the amendments are welcome, they do not go far enough in choosing students most suited to becoming doctors.

“Of course they need to have specific academic standards, but there is also a need to attract people with personal attributes which can only be looked at in some form of interview process.

“I know there has been reluctance to go down that road, because it could become about who you know instead of what you know, but it is already being done in Canada and elsewhere internationally,” Prof Finucane said.

Although this is his personal opinion, he has no bias on selection methods for undergraduates, as UL has no plans to extend its programme to school leavers.

The first 32 students are on campus this week and include Irish and EU students, joined by one from Canada and another from Israel. They were selected, with 30 students for the other graduate medicine course at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, based on an aptitude test taken last March.

Despite initial criticisms about a start-up medicine course at UL from some of the five existing medical schools, Prof Finucane said that this has been assigned to the past.

The UL graduate medicine course will take 60 new entrants next year, 90 the following year and 120 every year from 2010. It will operate from temporary accommodation for the first two years, but €25 million is being invested in developments on campus and at hospitals in the Mid-West and in Mullingar, Tullamore, Kilkenny and Clonmel, which will be used as training centres for student doctors at UL.