Six months after the start of the medical degree in Gozo, staff at Barts medical school in Rabat are settling in for the long-haul.
The deputy dean is shopping around for a car. The husband of the director of operations has quit his job in Buckingham Palace and will move to Gozo permanently at the end of April. A new lecturer arrives in Gozo next month, joining the other six full-time members of the academic staff.
The new lab technician, hired in December, and her colleague are looking forward to bingo at a local band club when I chatted with them – an event that would allow them “to practise Maltese”.
Barts certainly doesn’t seem like it is going anywhere. Yet, given the fiasco of Vitals Global Healthcare, the fact that the medical building remains a hole in the ground more than a year after it was slated for completion, and the chatter in the Gozo hospital that Barts could pull out if its reputation starts to take a battering, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Barts project could fold with spectacular unexpectedness.
“We are absolutely committed to the project, and we have invested a great amount of time and energy,” head of school Anthony Warrens said when I put these fears to him.
We are absolutely committed to the project, and we have invested a great amount of time and energy
“Sure, it’s unfortunate that the building hasn’t been built but the facilities that we have been provided with are good – not perfect, but good – and the UK’s General Medical Council agreed that the facilities are fine. It would be great to have the medical building, but for the moment this will do.”
One wing of the medical school in particular – the anatomy centre – has to be completed by the end of the year. Yet Steward Healthcare, the American company that took over the Gozo hospital project, is actually promising to deliver the entire medical school by that time.
“We are cautiously optimistic,” said deputy dean for education Catherine Molyneux.
At the same time, additional classes at the Gozo Sixth Form, where Barts has been teaching its 40 students so far this year, are being refurbished for the next intake of students in September. Sixty students are due for enrolment in September, as part of a targeted intake that will swell the student population to 300 over the five-year course-period.
After they finish their course – a bachelor of science in medicine and surgery – students would have to do two ‘foundation years’ and, although most students are expected to return to the UK for foundation, some may well stay in Malta, further swelling the student population.
“The targeted intake of 60 students a year is based on what we can expect to recruit and also predicated on the capacity of the medical school. We also have to consider the local impact: we don’t want to over-recruit and create strain on existent systems,” said Trisha Brown, the director of operations.
Students specifically apply for the course in Gozo as a separate track. The course in Gozo is much costlier for British nationals than the same course in London – tuition fees in Gozo amount to €35,000 every year, although an undisclosed number of students are on partial scholarships and one is on a full scholarship. Half of the students are British, the rest hailing from Asia, the Caribbean and mainland Europe.
But, although admission requirements are the same and the course in Gozo is a clone of the course in London, an incentive to apply for the course in Gozo is the greater probability of being accepted.
“Huge numbers of students apply for the London course and we cannot accept them all,” Ms Brown explained. “In fact students who were not able to get into the course in London were offered the opportunity to come here but it’s obviously up to them to take that choice.”
A recent cause for celebration is the endorsement by the UK’s General Medical Council, whose positive assessment is a must for the continuance of the course
Students and staff have been on something of a journey in the first six months of operation, and the experience has been mixed. The contentious privatisation of Gozo’s hospital has generated controversy and bad press by association. Non-delivery of the medical school on time has created tetchiness among the staff and the students. And the failure of the halls of residence to meet the latest, stringent fire-safety building-design stipulations in force in the UK after the Grenfell Tower fire in London added to the turbulence.
“Fire and safety regulations in the UK are very stringent,” said Ms Brown. “But we are mindful construction and materials are different here. So we are currently working with local partners to upgrade their buildings.”
At times the staff were left grappling with unforeseen complications, and the students disorientated by everything going on around them.
However, a recent cause for celebration is the endorsement by the UK’s General Medical Council, whose positive assessment is a must for the continuance of the course.
“GMC found no serious concerns,” said Ms Brown. “So we are able to continue on a rolling basis. They also found the present classes to be suitable. In terms of developments I think they commented about improving our communications. So, if we look at this from a local perspective it’s an opportunity to show that a lot of good work is being done here.”
The GMC made a satisfactory assessment of the range of local clinical employees of the Gozo hospital who are engaged by the school to deliver lectures on subjects of their specialisation.
“That was gratifying,” said Prof. Warrens. “The GMC were pleased the Maltese doctors they met became engaged with the project.”
I spoke to a handful of medical specialists who have been engaged in lecturing at the medical school and all talked earnestly about the school and the students. The feeling that comes through is that they view Barts as something that will bestow prestige upon the hospital, something that can potentially invigorate healthcare in Gozo.
“It’s not so much the economics of the project,” said one clinician who wished to remain anonymous because he wasn’t sure whether he could comment to the media openly. “It’s the prestige on the one hand and the exposure that Gozo gets among a segment of well-off high-society people on the other hand.”
“We are keen to make a contribution to Malta,” said Prof. Warrens – the project, according to some people close to him – is his ‘baby’. “We want it to be a leading academic institution that will improve the academic activity in the country. In fact, although we do not have formal relationship with the University of Malta, we are starting a joint Masters degree in surgical sciences, and we have been having a number of high-level meetings aimed at developing collaboration in research.”