Minutes:
The Chair welcomed those present to the meeting. Professor Naomi Low-Beer, Dean of Brunel Medical School (BMS), advised that BMS was a new institution designed for a changing world by providing the opportunity to rethink the future of medical education and the type of doctors that could be developed (considering global challenges such as climate change, pandemics and conflict).
BMS had been envisaged in 2016 and had been established under Professor Low-Beer’s leadership from 2020. The medical school was able to focus on the future of healthcare, team-based care, person-centred care, the use of technology, health and wellbeing, tackling health inequalities, patient empowerment and the transformation of healthcare through local partnerships.
Professor Low-Beer outlined three ways in which the medical school could make a difference: education; research and innovation; and local engagement. She described Brunel as a research-intensive, technologically focused university with a diverse student population and excellent healthcare partners. Brunel had a strong track record of widening access to its professional programmes which included nursing, OT physiotherapy, physician associates and social work.
The Board was provided with information about the medical school, including its MBBS degree programme and a physician associate MSc programme. The first cohort was currently in its second year of study and all of the students were international and self-funding. However, Professor Low-Beer advised that UK students would be starting at BMS from September 2024, with interviews for the first UK students taking place the following week.
BMS aimed to produce doctors that were aware of the importance of kindness, professionalism, lifelong learning and resilience and who adopted a teamwork ethos. The BMS programme had distinctive features such as team-based learning, a strong focus on communication skills and contact with patients in the local community from the first term of the first year.
As well as positive feedback about the first cohort, successes of the programme so far included the development of an identity as a London medical school, and interest from other UK medical schools in BMS’s team-based learning approach. Professor Low-Beer noted that BMS had developed hospital partnerships and connections with the local community through primary care partnerships and community engagement projects.
Action was being taken to widen access events and outreach activities, including a STEM outreach programme called Girls in STEM. Key priorities and challenges for the future included successfully graduating the first cohort, recruiting local medical students from widening access backgrounds, expanding the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) and Physician Associate (PA) programmes, and growing the BMS reputation for education. Action was being taken to introduce a new four-year MBBS programme, increasing the range of community placements, focusing on interprofessional learning and driving the local public health research agenda. This would secure BMS’s position as a medical school in the community, for the community.
The Board commended BMS’s team-based learning approach and queried how the school planned to show its students the benefits of early intervention and keeping people out of hospital, in line with the Borough’s vision. Consideration would need to be given to how they could demonstrate what staying out of hospital looked like in Hillingdon and ensure that GPs referred correctly to social care when a medical intervention was not necessary.
Professor Low-Beer was open to facilitating sessions for anyone interested in observing team-based learning. The community projects currently being undertaken by the students were their first exposure to seeing how patients were kept well out of hospital. Consideration was being given to formalising these projects into clinical placements for the later years for a more immersive experience.
Concern was expressed in relation to the growth of the medical school in the next few years and how partners could work together to build the capacity required for the students, especially in primary care. The Board also questioned how the school would retain some of the great students within Hillingdon so that they could get involved longer term with the local community. Professor Low-Beer advised that, even among international students, they expected around 70% to stay for some years after they had graduated, if not even longer term. Consideration was also being given to adopting live streaming technology to accommodate more students.
Ms Kelly O’Neill, Hillingdon’s Director of Public Health, commended the inclusion of public health and community-based understanding in the medical school’s agenda. She asked what difference the school expected to see when their first graduates finished in five years and how they could help their students understand how people lived and how that affected their health and wellbeing. Professor Low-Beer advised that BMS was aiming to create generalist doctors with an awareness of what the community had to offer in terms of care and the importance of health promotion and prevention. She would welcome having Ms O’Neill in to talk to their students.
RESOLVED: That the presentation and discussion be noted.