Working ward replicas that mirror a genuine hospital

Traditionally the training of doctors in the UK has been supported by public sector partnerships between state-funded universities and NHS hospitals. The model enables academic medical theory to be taught in an academic lecture, tutorial, and lab environment, followed by handson clinical practice and patient contact in a live hospital setting.

With the move to a fee-based funding model for universities, and reduced state funding for the higher education sector, the potential for an alternative approach has opened up. In 2013, the University of Buckingham, the UK’s only entirely privately-funded university, announced the launch of the country’s first independent, not-for-profit medical school. The result is a private and public sector partnership that draws on the experience, resources, and established clinical models, of the NHS at Milton Keynes University Hospital to provide practical training and clinical tuition for the University of Buckingham’s medical students. 

As one would expect from a privatelyfunded organisation with big ambitions  to grow its medical school intake, the vision has involved construction of a new, state-of-the-art, training facility, which has been five years in the making. The resulting University of Buckingham Medical School Academic Centre is extremely impressive, taking cues from the advanced technology-based learning provision in US medical training schools, and transplanting them into a purposebuilt academic centre within the hospital grounds where students will work with real patients from day one of their course.