List of medical schools in the United Kingdom

There are thirty-two medical schools in the United Kingdom that are recognised by the General Medical Council and from which students can obtain a medical degree. There are twenty-four such schools in England, five in Scotland, two in Wales and one in Northern Ireland. All but Warwick Medical School and Swansea Medical School offer undergraduate courses in medicine. The Bute Medical School (University of St Andrews) and Durham Medical School offer undergraduate pre-clinical courses only, with students proceeding to another medical school for clinical studies. Although Oxford University and Cambridge University offer both pre-clinical and clinical courses in medicine, students who study pre-clinical medicine at one of these universities may move to another university for clinical studies. At other universities students stay at the same university for both pre-clinical and clinical work.

Medical education prior to the foundation of the first medical school in the United Kingdom at the University of Edinburgh in 1726 was most often based on apprenticeships and professors of medicine did very little if any training of students. Few students graduated as physicians during this period.

The earliest place of medical training in Britain was in 1123 at St Bartholomew's Hospital, now part of Queen Mary, University of London. The first Chair of Medicine at a British university was established at Aberdeen in 1497, although this was only filled intermittently and there were calls "for the establishment of a medical school" in 1787. Medical teaching has taken place erratically at the University of Oxford since the early 16th century, and its first Regius Professor of Physic was appointed in 1546. Teaching was reformed in 1833 and again in 1856, but the current medical school was not founded until 1936. The University of St Andrews established a Chair of Medicine in 1772, but did not have a medical school (at Dundee) until 1897. The Linacre Readership in Medicine at the University of Cambridge was founded in 1524, and the Regius Professor of Physic was established in 1540. Teaching was reformed in 1829, but the current medical school was established in 1976. Teaching of apprentices was first recorded in 1561 at St Thomas's Hospital, London, and formalised between 1693 and 1709.

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