His university takes graduates from St Andrews with a three-year degree in medical sciences, who come to top up with the final years of doctor’s training at Manchester That works because these people have a grounding in science. Professor Tomlinson is not sure whether it would work for non-scientists.”What everybody is anxious about,” he explains, “is the quality of the education that individuals are going to get in shortened courses.”One reason for the caution is that the curriculum for medical students has undergone radical change in the past year. In other words, their parents are middle or upper middle class, and comfortably off. Getting on for half (45 per cent) of the entrants to Manchester last March were from independent schools.Whether or not the reform being proposed by St George’s would attract students from a broader range of social backgrounds, is debatable.”I’m enthusiastic about exploring options, because I think attracting graduates is something we would be very keen to do,” says Professor Tomlinson.At the same time, he is wary of an accelerated medical degree. Professor Stephen Tomlinson, dean of Manchester’s medical school and executive secretary of the council of deans of medical schools, says there’s a real concern that more than three-quarters (76 per cent) of last year’s entrants were from social classes one and two. Many gifted pupils opt for arts subjects because they find that they can take an active, critical part in humanities lessons, it says in its document.

By contrast, it is difficult to be creative in science until much later, when a solid body of knowledge has been learned. “Thus many students who would be highly suited to medicine, with its mix of people skills and science, are lost to the profession at an early age.”Other deans are sympathetic to the desire to recruit from a wider pool of applicants. Medical training has to be more than six years, or 5,500 hours, according to an EU directive.The idea of taking non-scientists and turning them into doctors within three years is not on the table in most other medical schools, though some deans, such as Professor Michael Langman at Birmingham, think it might be feasible to convert science graduates into doctors within that time.Professor Frank Harris, dean of Leicester’s medical school and a member of the GMC’s education committee, says: ” I am not against graduate entry, but patients want a high-quality, thoughtful and compassionate doctor, who can communicate and has the knowledge, skills and aptitude to look after them. “Students will be rigorously assessed, and take the same examinations as those on the five-year course,” says Dr Douglas Maxwell.The South London medical school is keen to attract arts as well as science graduates to medicine because it thinks they would enrich the student body as well as the profession.The English educational system forces children to choose between arts and sciences at a young age. That is not accomplished easily or quickly, otherwise we would have done so.”Nevertheless Leicester University is considering a conversion course for science graduates, lasting three-and-a-half years, as part of its joint bid with Warwick University for a new medical school.St George’s protests that there will be no lowering of standards in its proposed degree. It would be in addition to the traditional five-year medical degree; it would run for 37 months; and it might recruit students without science backgrounds, so long as that did not run foul of the European Union.

That is why some medical schools are proposing radical change in the shape of three- or four-year postgraduate degrees for people who have already been to university and who fancy the idea of wearing a white coat.”Graduate medical courses are the norm in North America, and are being developed elsewhere in the world,” says the 40-page discussion document for an accelerated degree from St George’s Hospital medical school in south London. “They allow a greater diversity of previous educational background and ensure a greater level of maturity.”St George’s – along with the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals – is blazing a trail that it hopes will win approval from London University and from the General Medical Council, the body that regulates the profession and ensures standards of qualifications.Its proposal – which was sent to those two bodies last week – is for a three-year medical degree for graduates on the lines of the well-established model of McMaster University in Canada. It is understood that further drafting was needed, to help officials to advise ministers on implementing the recommendations.Boosting the number of home-grown doctors takes time and money. His report, originally expected this month but now scheduled for the end of the year, is likely to suggest that up to 1,000 more medical students be recruited. Last year 60 per cent of newly trained medical practitioners came from abroad.