Medical students are fearing that broken promises and lack of transparency regarding Barts students will impact the standard of medical education given on the island.

The Health Ministry has not honoured its assurances that students at the newly-created Barts medical school will be allocated resources at Mater Dei without compromising the education of students from the University of Malta, Malta Medical Student Association (MMSA) president Omar Chircop said on Friday.

The MMSA has set up a task force with the University Students Council (KSU) to look into the matter.

This is not the first time the MMSA has voiced concerns: back in May, the association had said that wards used for medical rounds were already crowded and that adding more medical students would make the experience "irreparably worse".

At a press conference on Friday afternoon, Mr Chircop said the MMSA had been left in the dark in regards to the introduction of the Barts students at Mater Dei Medical school. 

The secrecy with which the Health Ministry was handling the affair meant that the integration of the private medical students into the current system was sure to be "disorderly and problematic", he added.

He further highlighted that resources the medical students’ needed to draw on to achieve a standard of professionalism were limited, and the Barts’ students were constantly increasing.

'We need to ensure standards'

The issue was not territorial but about making sure that all the students had adequate access to resources in a country in which they were limited, the secretary general of the MMSA Glenn Briffa explained.

“Barts students are students just like us and we would like to collaborate with them. But first, we need to assure that the health services in Malta and the quality of doctors we produce remains at the standard it is today,” he said.

Without investing in extending the resources currently available to medical students, such as the extension of library and simulation rooms and an increase in the number of consultants, the system will be strained, he added. 

Furthermore, as part of their clinical practice Mater Dei students need to consult with patients, which meant that the student-to-patient ratio will have to increase, to the detriment of the education of students and patients’ comfort.

A resolution presented by the MMSA to Health Minister Chris Fearne in April, on the requests and safeguards of Barts medical school was ignored and further attempts to contact him on the issue were unsuccessful, according to a statement released by the task force.