This is the proposed logo for the project being worked on at the moment "The Scottish Universities Medical Journal" which I'm hoping will be developed over the forthcoming year with input from all of the medical schools in Scotland.
This week in the press was the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Medicine this year to Robert Edwards, the man credited with the discovery of in-vitro fertilisation. This treatment has helped over 4 million babies to be born around the world and now in the UK accounts for 2-3% of all new births. Although the process has been criticised from many religious groups, such as the Vatican, there is no doubt about the benefit this technology has been of to the huge numbers of couples every year who are infertile. It has been 32 years now since the first 'test-tube' baby was born in the UK and since then there has been a staggering increase in new developments, such as the development of intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.
Other topics which have been covered in the news have particularly relevant to me personally over the last couple of weeks. The most pressing is the news that there will be a shortage of foundation jobs for applicants this year. The waste of time, money and talent for any graduating doctor to be without a post next August seems pretty awful, particularly with the application process currently used. It seems that in the next few years an exam style application will be introduced whereby all applicants must complete the form within a set, short time period.
The new government is soon to introduce the true extent of the spending cuts which have dominated the headlines this year. News today is that students may be facing a 100% increase in tuition fees (certainly in England) and/or a new graduate tax. If this is brought in, it will hit students hard and I think many will drop out of university as a result. Medical students in particular (who take on longer, more intensive degrees and have less time for part-time work) will surely be the worst affected. Bringing in higher fees certainly goes against all of the work which the BMA has done in the past 5 or 10 years to broaden access to medicine. The next few weeks will be very interesting to see what happens and the reaction which will be taken to the proposed cuts.
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