CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article
Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1586851
This article is part of the Research TopicDistributed Training and Rural Health Professions EducationView all 13 articles
Development and innovation in a new distributed medical programme: Scottish Graduate Entry Medicine (ScotGEM)
Provisionally accepted
Fiona Graham1,2*Jon Dowell1Angela Flynn2
Shalini Gupta1
Andrew MacFarlane3
Andrew O'Malley2Robert Scully4
Francis Michael Sullivan2Lloyd Thompson1
Kirsty Alexander1,2- 1University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom
- 2University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom
- 3NHS Education for Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- 4University of Galway, Galway, County Galway, Ireland
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Addressing the shortage of primary-care physicians, especially in remote and rural areas, is a crucial target in many countries. This article introduces the Scottish Graduate Entry Medicine (ScotGEM) programme: a compressed, tailor-made curriculum designed to equip and enthuse its graduates to practice generalist and rural medicine in Scotland, within the ethos of socially accountable medicine.This curriculum paper describes ScotGEM in sufficient detail for the reader to translate elements to their own context. It then collates findings from evaluations, research projects and many critical discussions about the programme. This work is used to describe and evaluate the curriculum design and delivery, with a focus on the distributed aspects.Three key innovations of the curriculum are explored in detail: the Generalist Clinical Mentor role; the year-long primary care LIC; and the Agents of Change curriculum. There are early signs that ScotGEM is encouraging generalist, rural careers within Scotland. There is also growing evidence of the benefits ScotGEM faculty and students bring to the clinical workforce in the distributed settings.Distributed programmes require additional organisation for students and faculty. Partnerships can be challenging but immensely rewarding. Healthcare partners in rural areas need to be involved early in planning and strong relationships fostered with local 'champions'.
Keywords: Distributed training, Undergraduate Medical Education, Rural and remote areas, Scotland, Family Medicine and General Practice, Social accountability
Received: 03 Mar 2025; Accepted: 11 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Graham, Dowell, Flynn, Gupta, MacFarlane, O'Malley, Scully, Michael Sullivan, Thompson and Alexander. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fiona Graham, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4HN, Scotland, United Kingdom
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