Gateways guidance: 3.4 Medicine: an array of different careers
Medicine is not a single career; it is a group of careers. The graduates of medical school become, among other things, surgeons, physicians, psychiatrists, laboratory specialists, public health doctors, researchers, and policy makers. Medical schools have always accepted a variety of applicants for this variety of careers.
Nonetheless, all medical students must satisfy the outcomes and curricular requirements set by the GMC in Tomorrow’s Doctors. As the GMC states in Core Education Outcomes:
- ‘The point of a medical course is to produce a doctor fit for clinical practice. What doctors then choose to do with their career is a matter for them’.
In addition, all graduates who wish to practise clinically in the UK must achieve full GMC registration and will normally complete a Foundation Programme before proceeding to specialty training. The GMC has the authority to recognise modified Foundation Year 1 programmes for doctors with a disability, though the outcomes must still be achieved. The outcomes required for full registration, normally at the end of Foundation Year 1, are set in The New Doctor.