Welcome to the start of a wonderful academic year! For some it may be your first year with us as new Year 1 students or the first year of our updated Graduate Entry programme and I hope you will enjoy making the most of every moment for, as Year 5 students will share, the journey is over all too quickly!
A big thank you to all of the teams who have been involved in arranging welcome activities (link) and of course our societies and peer mentors who have played, and I'm sure will continue to play, a pivotal role in your student experience this year.
Campus is positively buzzing with you all and it has been a great pleasure to meet with so many of you in these past weeks and to hear of the exciting plans being made by so many different societies at your society fair.
This month, the Faculty had a short notice visit from the Minister of State for Health (secondary care). Many thanks to the students who took time to meet her, and who took the opportunity to note their thoughts on the general Foundation Programme Allocation Scheme. I have enjoyed working with colleagues in the 5 schools across the NW region to look at how we could adopt a similar approach to selection to the Specialised Foundation Programme, so students can have the same chance in each school.
It was lovely to speak with the School’s Class of 1969 when they met to celebrate their 55-year anniversary (link) this month, though I was easily outshone by the 2 students, Priya and Soma, who came to meet them too How fascinated our alumni were with the new curriculum and ways of learning, particularly our clinical skills and simulation facilities, which for is us very much all in day’s work.
Indeed, it was also lovely to spend time with colleagues at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital and consider how they could adapt a teaching centre into a high-fidelity simulation space.
This year, I encourage you to help the School team and I as we continue to build our MBChB programme, by actively sharing your input through evaluation surveys, feedback sessions and through your training team leads and course reps, as so much of what you share is used to make changes that enormously benefit the whole year group, and cohorts to come.
We are on the case working through the 384 ideas that those of you in Y2-5 kindly shared at the start of the year, to flag those we have a chance to progress soon and embed some of the others into longer plans we are building for this year and next year. It was also really helpful to have so many positive comments on what you would highlight about the course to share with those who came to our packed Open Day this September. Thanks again to all of you who supported that also.
But most of all, and following on from how our alumni were pleased to note how much ‘the family feel’ remains at Liverpool, I hope that you embrace all of the opportunities the year will present you with, whether that be bonding with others over shared interests through our wonderful range of societies, getting together to raise money for worthy causes (link) or putting yourself forward to present your work or try for a publication (link). The world is your oyster! And I am looking forward to seeing all of your endeavours on our news page as the year unfolds.