There are thirty-two medical schools in the United Kingdom that are recognised by the General Medical Council and from which students can obtain a medical degree.[2] There are twenty-four such schools in England, five in Scotland, two in Wales and one in Northern Ireland. All but Warwick Medical School and Swansea Medical School offer undergraduate courses in medicine. The Bute Medical School (University of St Andrews) and Durham Medical School offer undergraduate pre-clinical courses only, with students proceeding to another medical school for clinical studies. Although Oxford University and Cambridge University offer both pre-clinical and clinical courses in medicine, students who study pre-clinical medicine at one of these universities may move to another university for clinical studies. At other universities students stay at the same university for both pre-clinical and clinical work.

Medical education prior to the foundation of the first medical school in the United Kingdom at the University of Edinburgh in 1726[3] was most often based on apprenticeships and professors of medicine did very little if any training of students. Few students graduated as physicians during this period.

The earliest place of medical training in Britain was in 1123 at St Bartholomew's Hospital, now part of Queen Mary, University of London. The first Chair of Medicine at a British university was established at Aberdeen in 1497,[4] although this was only filled intermittently and there were calls "for the establishment of a medical school" in 1787.[5] Medical teaching has taken place erratically at the University of Oxford since the early 16th century, and its first Regius Professor of Physic was appointed in 1546. Teaching was reformed in 1833 and again in 1856,[6] but the current medical school was not founded until 1936.[7] The University of St Andrews established a Chair of Medicine in 1772, but did not have a medical school (at Dundee) until 1897.[8] The Linacre Readership in Medicine at the University of Cambridge was founded in 1524, and the Regius Professor of Physic was established in 1540. Teaching was reformed in 1829,[6] but the current medical school was established in 1976.[9] Teaching of apprentices was first recorded in 1561 at St Thomas's Hospital, London, and formalised between 1693 and 1709.[10]

The University of Edinburgh Medical School was founded in 1726 and was the first formally established medical school in the UK. This was followed by Glasgow in 1744, although the school was without a teaching hospital until 1794.[11] The oldest medical school in England is St George's, University of London, which began formal teaching in 1751.[12] In 1768 teaching at St Thomas's and Guy's hospitals in London was formalised with the foundation of the United Hospitals Medical School, which lasted until the foundation of a separate medical school at Guy's in 1825 (now both part of King's College London).[10] The London Hospital Medical College (LHMC) was founded in 1785 and is now part of Queen Mary, University of London's School of Medicine. In the first half of the 19th century, the newly founded university colleges in London opened teaching hospitals in 1834 (University College Hospital)[13] and 1839 (King's College Hospital).[14] The Middlesex Hospital Medical School (now part of UCL) was also founded in this period, in 1835.[13] The London School of Medicine for Women was founded in 1874, the first medical school in Britain to teach women (now part of UCL).[15]

Outside of London and the universities, medical teaching began in Manchester in 1752[16] and lectures in Birmingham in 1767.[17] Medical schools in Manchester (1824),[18]Birmingham (1825),[17]Sheffield (1829),[19]Leeds (1831),[20] Bristol (1833),[21]Newcastle (1834),[22]Liverpool (1834),[23] and Belfast (1835)[24] were formally established in the first half of the 19th century. Durham University introduced teaching by a Reader in Medicine from its opening in 1833, but had no medical school until the affiliation of the College of Medicine in Newcastle in 1854.[25] In the later 19th century a medical school was established at Cardiff in 1894.[26]

The Medical Act 1858 was a key development in the professionalising of medical practice and training, introducing the General Medical Council and the Medical Register.[27]

The next expansion of medical schools began following the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Medical Education (1965-1968) (the Todd Report), which called for the immediate establishment of new schools in Southampton, Leicester and Nottingham to aid medical education in the United Kingdom;[28][29] all were built between 1970 and 1980. Medical schools at Warwick (located in the City of Coventry), Swansea, Keele (located in the City of Stoke-on-Trent) and Hull (in partnership with York) eventually opened in the 1990s and early 21st century, as well as new medical schools at University of East Anglia (located in the city of Norwich) Durham, Brighton and Sussex, and Plymouth and Exeter. Buckingham University, the oldest private university in England, launched a graduate entry medical school in 2010[30] although it offers only postgraduate MD qualifications to doctors already qualified to MBBS or equivalent and does not offer initial medical training approved by the General Medical Council at present. It is due to accept its first batch of undergraduates for a four and a half year MBBCh course in 2015 at a cost of 35,000 per year.[31] The school will be known as Buckingham Milton Keynes Medical School and will be in partnership with Milton Keynes NHS Trust.[31] The University of Central Lancashire is expected to submit an application for a private medical school in summer 2013. However, the BMA has expressed concerns that private schools could worsen wider participation in medicine.[32]

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