A technical error by the Glasgow University medical school has led to delays in placements being issued to medical students.
Students have told The Glasgow Guardian that delays in being provided with their placements for the coming year could potentially jeopardise their performance, as the medical school blames IT issues.
As part of their medical degree, students are expected to undertake placements in their third, fourth, and fifth years of study. These placements are directly assigned to students by the medical school. This involves a student selected component which takes the form of a 5-week placement which could take place in Glasgow or further afield, in which case students may want to make arrangements for alternative accommodation.
A fourth-year medical student has told The Glasgow Guardian that they were given details of their general medicine and surgery blocks without sufficient notice. Then they were again late in receiving the details of their student selected component including the speciality which they were going to cover.
The student told The Glasgow Guardian: “this means that I’m going to be behind from the get-go unfortunately as it leaves no time for pre-reading. It looks bad on me as it will seem as if I am unprepared going into the placement despite having no control over the timings.”
Another student we spoke to told us that they have received a placement outside of Glasgow later than expected, which has put them in a potentially difficult situation as they had planned to organise accommodation closer to their placement, which now seems unlikely.
A spokesperson for the University of Glasgow said: “As a result of IT issues there was a delay in medical school placement allocations this term, including student selected components. This issue has now been resolved and most student selected components will start as normal in September. We are working to ensure this administrative delay does not happen in the future, and apologise to all our students who have been impacted.”
