Medical School

Overview

Our region’s hospitals have many workforce gaps and we sit in one of the worst regions in the UK for a shortfall in the number of doctors per patient, with 2,500 people per GP. It’s widely known the UK’s health service is under strain. Demand is increasing, the level of care is ever more complex, our population is ageing, and our workforce is under greater pressure than ever before. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in Portsmouth.

The launch of the new Medical School at the University of Portsmouth is an exciting venture that will allow us to improve the future supply of doctors to the local area. 

By providing further prospects to work with our local NHS partners on research, innovation and teaching, the new University of Portsmouth Medical School will bring much wider health and wellbeing benefits to Portsmouth, Gosport, south east Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. 

We have excellent working partnerships with hundreds of the region’s GPs, and with our region’s four NHS Trusts.

Our strong and established partnerships will help ensure we are able to make a strong contribution to our region’s healthcare and help build a reputation for excellence in healthcare across all settings, including in hospitals and GP surgeries, in our cities and in rural villages.

Teaching

Our Medical School will provide an opportunity for people in our region to engage with new career paths using our tried and tested approaches to support people into education and careers they might not have previously considered possible. 

We will train doctors who are compassionate, well rounded and highly skilled. Our future medics will balance global concerns about sustainability with the needs of the population. 

They will be highly skilled at using new and emerging technologies, in which we already lead across the full suite of healthcare courses we offer, and to which the NHS is increasingly turning to. 

In their third year, our students will undertake longer than usual placements in the community, alongside doctors, allowing them to build rounded relationships with patients, to gain deeper understanding of people’s health over time and develop a strong sense of belonging in our region.

With a key focus on widening participation, the University of Portsmouth Medical School will be part of a new wave of medical schools helping educate future doctors who truly represent the people they serve. They might come from any background, including and perhaps especially from families without the ‘social capital’ of being familiar with having doctors in their social or family group, which can be a barrier to deciding to enter medicine.

Research

In the most recent Research Excellence framework (REF) in 2021, 78 per cent of the research from our Faculty of Science and Health was graded as world-leading or internationally excellent. 

Our research in Health and Care Professions deals with the most-pressing health and wellbeing issues facing society – from the challenges of caring for an ageing population, to the importance of delivering effective health and social care to the most under-represented, vulnerable or isolated groups in society. 

In our health, wellbeing and social care research, we're exploring how best to manage the demands of an ageing population, in which mental health problems are on the rise, and increasing numbers of people are living with complex, long-term health problems. We're helping health and social care providers to make best use of the limited resources at their disposal, so they can deliver vital care and support to those who need it most.

As the demands placed on the emergency services become ever greater and more complex, our acute and emergency care research is exploring how new technology – including the use of robots in surgery – can improve patient care in acute (hospital-based) and emergency contexts. We're also identifying what needs to be done so that a skilled workforce is in place to put these new technologies to use. 

In our patient-and-user-experience research we're working to better understand the health and wellbeing needs, challenges and experiences of everyone in society – and by developing a better understanding of how patients, service users and family members experience healthcare services and illness, help make a positive impact on patients' and users' lives.

Like all new medical schools, this programme is undergoing the process of accreditation by the UK General Medical Council (GMC). This process will not be finalised until our first cohort is about to graduate. At any stage, including before admission of the first group, the GMC approval process can be halted.