Student review [#30857] for Medicine
at Aston University

Aston Medical School (AMS) is a rather new medical school located in the heart of Birmingham City Centre. Its ready to see its first batch graduate in july 2023.
As far as the Medical School is concerned, it has affiliations with major hospitals in Birmingham like City and Sandwell hospital, New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, University Hospital Birmingham, Good Hope, Children’s Hospital and Heartlands to name a few. It is also associated with around 84 GP prractices around Birmingham and Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group for GP placements for students.
AMS has quite a significant number of international students coming in every year as they have more available seats compared to some other unis in the UK for medicine. And as of 2022-23 they also dont have any UCAT requirements. The Medical School itself is located in the Aston Main Building. Although the Med School itself isn’t huge, it has multiple clinical rooms with SAM (Student Auscultation Manikin) which aid your OSCE prep. Although, manikin’s at hospitals like New Cross or City hospital and better and have more to offer which you will get a chance to explore through your placements in Y3, 4 and 5.
On the other hand, a new Med School brings its own disadvantages. There have been a lot of Clinical Teaching Fellows and professors who have left the University which means there have been many new and young CTF’s. Although there is no doubting the talent of the newly graduates F1’s, i have found them to be a little dumbfounded during some of our group works in Y1 and 2. And with more staff leaving, things look a bit tricky for the new Y1’s and 2’s as teaching in Y3, 4 and 5 is mainly in hospitals. The administration too is new and there have been multiple instances where a lot of challenges haven’t been dealt with well from AMS compared to other rather Old Universities. I personally put this to the fact that AMS needs to prove itself being a new uni and most importantly not having been given the accreditation by the GMC which they shall receive in 2024 when the first batch graduates. However, the accreditation isn’t guaranteed and will be a cause for concern but we shall find that out in the summer of 2023.
Overall, for a new Medical School, AMS has done a reasonable job in settling down as a Med School. With partnerships with major hospitals, they have made a statement and as the cohorts start graduating, the school is bound to get better and better and things should start settling down nicely.