The GMC told me on the phone yesterday that they will not recognise spartan as the curriculum does not meet their minimum requirement of 5500 hours. Spartan is only 5200 hours (email from Spartan to confirm this) plus over 50% of the course is delivered outside of St Lucia. The placements which are outside of St Lucia are greater than 50% of the course is outside of the island so the course is considered to be delivered substantially outside of the country of origin.

Despite Spartan continually arguing that the course is 4 academic years, this is nonsense; the course is 3 years however you look at it and does not meet the requirements for a PMQ in the UK.

When you apply for registration in the UK, you have to put your enrolment and graduation dates, how are you going to try and explain the 12 month difference???? A year is a year however you look at it. The course is too short and too much of it is delivered outside of St Lucia to be acceptable to the GMC.

I have asked them to put this in writing and I will update you with a scanned copy of the letter when it arrives.

Is nobody else bothered that the GMC in the UK has refused to recognise this school? So now it is banned in an entire country as well as several States.

your info is not correct. i will give you someone's e mail address if you need direct contact with a recent grad that just started working in the UK.

The only way they would have gained registration in the UK is if they had lied to the GMC or falsified their records as the GMC have confirmed to me that they will not recognise graduates of Spartan for several reasons: the education is conducted wholly or mainly outside of the country of registration, the course is not long enough (5200 hours compared to 5500) and 3 years compared to 4

Bare in mind that the rules in the UK have very recently changed as well so it is entirely possible that this person was registered before the changes. There are Spartan graduates working in the UK who were obviously licensed before the rules changed.

Also, unless they are a UK citizen it would have been impossible for them to have gained a training post as the new rules do not permit non UK citizens a training position unless there are NO UK citizens who require a position. As there are more UK graduates than there are training positions it follows that this person must have completed an internship before registering in the UK or they were a UK citizen.

Have you even seen the application for an F1 position? If UK graduates are unable to find a post how on earth did a Spartan grad find one?

If the press got hold of this information there would be a public outcry and it is likely that person would not be in a job for long as there is a waiting list for UK graduates.

you obviously have some serious anger issues with this. but, as a matter of fact, my co-graduate is from england. and he just recently went through the process. every caribbean student has to jump through hoops after graduation. i hope you get used to it.

There's a huge difference between a "jump through hoops" and flying under the radar or being economical with the truth about your studies.
Now I'm not suggesting that your colleague did the latter (apart from anything else, I don't wish for an online diagnosis of failed anger management). However it might be that he was lucky. Paramedic is right, these rules are very new; moreover the GMC is somewhat chaotic at times: mistakes over eligibility for registration (quaint GMC-speak for licensure) are made - a senior GMC bureaucrat declared as much to me.
However Spartan may well be addressing this issue -
"SHSU curriculum is an accelerated program which could be completed in 36 consecutive calendar months (3 calendar years). Of those,
you must spend 16 months (4 trimesters) in St. Lucia for the basic science and pre- clinical science program and the remaining 20 months
(5 trimesters) in United States for the Clinical training program. In the near future, we will offer a five trimesters of basic sciences and pre-clinical science program".
(taken from the FAQ's on their web site)
I also wonder if there is a let-out in the "could be completed in 36 months"..?


There has been some dispute about the number of study hours that Spartans can claim (albeit that doesn't seem to obviate the 50% rule) -
http://www.valuemd.com/spartan-medic...tudents-2.html
although I imagine you are already familiar with that discussion.

__________________
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho", 1983

Virtually the same argument from another UK student! I have an email from Spartan confirming the course contact time is 5240 hours. However you look at this, it is still less than the GMC require.

Why would you go to a school which encourages you to lie about how long you have spent at medical school? Even if you took a vacation or prepared to USMLE for a few months it still doesn't detract from the fact that the syllabus is only 36 months and 5240 hours.

Additionally, more than 50% of the programme is conducted outside of the country. If an applicant was honest with the GMC then they would not be eligible to register as a doctor with a Spartan MD. However, it appears that students are lying and falsifying their records. This is a criminal offence in the UK! Even if you just stretched the truth a tiny little bit about how long your study was then you have fraudulently obtained registration.

I don't have anger issues at all pal, but there are hundreds of UK graduates each year who cannot obtain jobs and some dropout with a 3 year degree comes along and steals a position from them.

Let's face it, Spartan is on the slippery slope to closure. If any other school had a courant article about them, had New York taken away, lost loans etc then they would challenge it. They would work their ***** off to rectify the situation.

However, Spartan just rest on their laurels knowing that desperate people will still pay them money to earn a phony MD. If this was my business then I would fight tooth and nail to build it's reputation back up. I would fight for California approval, loans and try to get a new article printed about the school.

Why would anyone go to a school that doesn't care about their reputation, student's ability to practice anywhere in the world or care about the student's, period!!!

In fact other schools in the Caribbean did get their Cali and NY approval back, they got loans back for their students. But what do Spartan do? Tell students to lie, ignore bad press, refuse to challenge or improve the school's bad reputation.

WOW! Sign me up! I want to give them $90k!!!

You have substantial evidence of these allegations?

__________________
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho", 1983

Yes, I have an email from Spartan telling me that they will alter my transcipt to show 5500 hours, telling me to take time to revise for USMLE and that this would make it look as though I had been at Spartan for longer.

Additionally, after telling me initially that they would arrange all my rotations; I now find out that I would have to arrange my own rotations in the UK! Go figure!

The GMC have also advised hospitals not to allow Spartan students to complete rotations there. Only students from approved medical schools are allowed to rotate in UK hospitals since the St Chris/London College incident.