Welcome back and the year ahead
As we restart each of our years of Medicine and Dentistry, and welcome new medical, dental and science students and our students intercalating, we have been reflecting on what we need to do to maximise the success of our medical and dental school and its students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Put simply this requires each of us to deliver a strong staff-student partnership. Firstly, we congratulate dentistry on resolving all BDS student outcomes and thank all MBBS teachers for working so hard with our students to ensure we progress as many as possible, especially given the number of students who had to resit. I encourage everyone to give a really warm welcome to all returning and new students and to continue to offer our support and advice to students who may be in the Appeals process, which we hope to complete by the 18th October 2022. We welcome those on undergraduate science degrees and postgraduate courses and look forward to welcoming many more UK and international students. Make sure you stay in close contact with your course coordinator and our Barts and The London Students Association, which is part of Queen Mary Students Union (QMSU), where you can raise any issues and if you are on campus you can join in student activities. Secondly, we want everyone to get off to a flying start and given the number of students who had to resit on the MBBS course both staff and students must pay close attention to all assessments, both formative and summative. Staff and students share a responsibility to act early if there are problems. The pandemic is still having an impact, therefore I want us to go the extra thousand miles to support our BDS, MBBS and science students with compassion and understanding to create the community that matches our caring values. We encourage all students to be on our campus and at their clinical attachments. Medicine and dentistry is a practical subject and there is value in learning with and from your year and in the later years there is absolutely no substitute for spending time with patients. Anyone who has had progression issues needs to ensure they are working effectively and at the level needed to address the demands of the BDS and MBBS courses – please don’t hesitate to seek help. Thirdly, we are at our best when we are a community, not us and them; this year we want staff and students to unite much more to deliver the success we all want. We’ll be kicking off major new programmes to provide new facilities and to upgrade our MBBS and BDS courses. Finally, with the team we’ll be looking carefully at how we support students with the financial challenges ahead and will write shortly with our plans. Our student support team is currently running an exploratory cost-of-living survey to help inform our response. It is open to all students, completely anonymous and it can be accessed on the following page. Thank you for what you are and will be doing Wishing you every success,
Mark Caulfield Joanne Martin Anthony WarrensVP (Health) Deputy VP (Health) Dean for Education
Arunthathi Paul Coulthard Charlie SellarMahendranDirector of IHSE Dean for Dentistry BLSA President