Working at the PCMD
Message from the Dean
The Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry is a partnership with the University of Exeter, University of Plymouth and the NHS in Devon and Cornwall. The quality of the partnership can be measured in many ways, most recently by the award of a £10 million grant by the National Institute of Health Research to establish the Peninsula Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care. This collaboration is a fantastic opportunity for the clinical academic partnership in Devon and Cornwall to engage in research that will improve the quality of the health care for the people of the South West.
The award marks another milestone achievement for the College following the addition of the Peninsula Dental School in 2006, the first new Dental School in the UK for over 40 years.
At the same time as we establish the Dental School, the Peninsula Medical School is evolving from a new School into the fastest growing medical School in the UK. Yet we remain committed to innovation and a freshness of approach: our reputation for delivery is based very much on a willingness to think creatively without compromising on quality and to drive forward change through genuine partnership working.
The Medical School graduated its first doctors in July 2007 and over 80% are now practising in the local NHS. We are also committed to developing a close professional partnership with the NHS at the postgraduate level, and in order to focus our postgraduate activities more towards the evolving professional requirements of the NHS and clinicians, we have recently established a College Graduate School. The School will have close links to the Strategic Health Authority and the Postgraduate Deanery, and will be well positioned to address any significant development in postgraduate training that may emerge from the Darzi review. We are also absolutely committed to be competitive in research terms and thus establish PCMD as a genuinely research intensive organisation. In the last five years we have attracted over £25 million of research income and we have advanced plans to treble our research activities by 2015.
These are very exciting times for the College as we strive to meet the challenges of the future and become a top UK medical school. I genuinely believe that working for PCMD is a great opportunity for people to realise their potential and be part of something great – an innovative and partnership orientated enterprise that is committed to the highest quality research and clinical education.
Professor Sir John Tooke
MA MSc BM BCh DM DSc (Oxon) FRCP FRCGP (Hon)
FAcadMed (Hon) FMedSci