New format coming for Medical College

Nails continue to be driven into the coffin of Kingstown Medical College as more information comes to light from St George’s University in Grenada.

It is becoming almost a certainty that the Kingstown Medical College will shut its doors.{{more}}

SEARCHLIGHT has been very reliably informed that August this year would not see the usual influx of over 300 students at the college, but instead, rotations of 50 students every two weeks to do their clinical studies at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital in Kingstown.

Additionally, sources indicate that a 750-seat auditorium is currently being constructed in Grenada. This SEARCHLIGHT understands will be followed by a 1000 room dormitory.

While this is being put in place, as part of a memorandum of understanding between the University and the Government of Grenada, the university will be facilitating the recruiting of healthcare professionals to serve as embedded coaches, teachers and mentors at the general hospital there.

The project, which is called the Virtual Staff Project is aimed at expanding the capacity of the general hospital, improving the quality of care for its patients and providing an environment for supporting the training of health care professionals.

The project will run for approximately two years and will be reviewed after that period to determine the impact and the feasibility of further extension. It has been reported that the general hospital needs to be recognized as a teaching hospital to support the rotation of the university’s medical students.

It is the quality of the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital that has made the Kingstown leg of the medical students journey necessary because it is here that they get their clinical training.

So according to SEARCHLIGHT’s St George’s University source, an improved Grenada hospital plus increased housing facilities on campus, plus auditorium facilities equal death to the Kingstown Medical College – with or without a crime problem.

“It simply becomes more feasible for the university to keep the students in Grenada,” our source indicates.

The level of crime against students was being touted as the reason for the rumoured plan by the university to pull out. Chancellor Charles R Modica even suggested in a letter to worried medical school landlords that if things continue (crime situation), “the long and fruitful relationship between the university and the entire St Vincent community will be threatened.” Now the evidence seems to be pointing in the direction that the long fruitful relationship had already begun to sour before the crime issue took centre stage.

The landlords have formed themselves into an organization to address the crime concerns, the police have been working feverishly along with the local school to clamp down on instances of crime against students and to apprehend persons who have committed such crime.

However the latest word is that the new format will continue until the long term plan is in place – a $22 million industry is on its way out.