Third year medical students claim they have been denied Mater Dei placements because of a shortage of consultants caused by an influx of Barts students.
Students were denied their gastroenterology placement this week because there were not enough consultants at Mater Dei hospital to cater for all pupils, according to the Malta Medical Students' Association and the University of Malta students’ council (KSU).
The associations are insisting the issue is a “direct result” of students from the newly-opened Barts Medical School also carrying out their placements at Mater Dei.
As part of their course, medical students must complete a number of hours of clinical practice under the supervision of consultants specialised in various areas of medicine.
“It is now abundantly clear that the influx of Barts Medical students is already putting a strain on the system and is denying University of Malta students full access to the academic staff at Mater Dei,” they said.
The issue had already been raised with the Health Ministry, the students said, however they belied their concerns were “not taken seriously”.
The medical students are also concerned at the fact that the Barts Medical school is not yet operating at full capacity.
As the number of Barts students increases, such incidents would become more frequent “to the detriment of the quality of medical education at the University of Malta”.
Requests for meetings with the government have been ignored, the students said.
Questions by Times of Malta to both the university and the Health Ministry have not yet been answered.
What is this all about?
This is not the first time university students have raised the issue.
At the start of the scholastic year in September, the medical students said they feared broken promises and lack of transparency regarding the Barts students would impact the standard of medical education offered on the island.
In May, the MMSA had said that wards used for medical rounds were already crowded and that adding more medical students would make the experience "irreparably worse".
The new state-of-the-art medical school in Gozo, long promised to Barts students, opened its doors last year, three years after the promised date.
About 100 students study at the Gozo branch of the London medical school operated by Steward Health Care, the US company that runs St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo General Hospital.