Successful Medical Students Wrongly Branded ‘Failures’ by QUB

The Medical department (listed as one of the top 20 university departments in the UK) accidentally forced two students into resitting examinations they had originally passed last month, wasting term time and causing unnecessary anxiety for the wronged students.

Professor Pascal McKeown, director of the Centre for Medical Education at the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences apologised on Monday in an email to the students involved. Professor McKeown said “Please accept my sincere apologies that these errors have occurred and for any confusion or distress caused.”

But many students see this apology as too little too late. One anonymous QUB medical student complained “We pay our fees, we work hard and what do we get in return, an apology and an X beside our names with a poor reputation among our peers as failures.”

Professor McKeown responded to the criticism by saying “I will be working with staff within the centre, school and university to put measures in place to minimise the possibility of errors such as these occurring in the future.” He also said that the good news was where a student should have received fewer marks, their score will remain the same. However, it’s still led to criticism over such a monumental glitch going unnoticed in the system.

Fellow medical student Lauren stated “I’m not surprised, as there was quite a lot of confusion with the 5th years either not receiving their marks, or receiving incorrect marks last year, and I think there was quite a lot of them who had to wait ages to have everything sorted.”

Were you one of the students affected by QUB’s cock up? Let us know what you think; leave us a comment or tweet us @TheTabBelfast