By Claire Keith and Tom Walker
You may be wondering what on earth the Medical Schools Council is. Tom and I didn't know either when we were asked to attend this event.
It turns out it's a group of all the deans from medical schools around the country, who are working together to promote excellence in education. This year, they held a student conference to find out what we thought about the key issues that are going to affect us.
Our first discussion centred around careers; how to promote general practice as a more popular option to medical students, the 'shape of training review' and the NHS five-year plan to move more and more services into the community. It was a very vocal and engaged group of med students, and what became immediately apparent was the vast difference in experiences at each med school.
It turns out that, comparatively, we have a relatively large exposure to general practice as a specialty, whereas our colleagues at Imperial are being actively put off it as a career by their faculty, with no time built into the curriculum for it.
