ETH Zurich to offer regularly a Bachelor of Medicine

From 2021 onwards, the university will be offering a Bachelor degree in Human Medicine as standard. According to a press release issued by ETH, the pilot project launched three years ago has been a complete success. For this reason, the development phase for this pilot project has been brought to an end more than a year earlier than originally planned. The curriculum has been fine-tuned on an ongoing basis, with feedback from students also taken into account during this process. In addition to fundamental medical knowledge, the study course will focus on honing skills to exploit modern technologies in addition to ensuring that students develop the capacity for effective teamwork, interactivity and critical thinking.  

Each year since 2017, a total of 100 students have registered for the Bachelor of Medicine course, which was developed from scratch and initially launched as a pilot project, at ETH Zurich. This summer, the first batch of students graduated after completing their Bachelor examinations. Of the 100 students who started in the course in 2017, a total of 87 are currently still part of the group. Of this number, 77 have already completed their Bachelor degree – meaning they finished the course in the minimum study time permitted. Just two remain at ETH having opted to switch courses. All of the remaining 75 graduates are now studying for a Master’s degree in Human Medicine at one of the three partner universities: 20 each in Zurich and Basel, with the remaining 35 enrolling at Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano.

“This guarantees that ETH will continue to make a real contribution to remedying the shortage of doctors in Switzerland”, according to Sarah Springmann, Rector of ETH Zurich.  “Overall, based on our experience, we expect that about 85 to 90 percent of new students will go on to complete their Bachelor’s degree”, explains ETH professor Christian Wolfrum in the press release. Together with Jörg Goldhahn, Wolfrum has been director of the new course for the past three years. Both men take the view that strengthening the quality of clinical teaching represents the most important objective for the future: “Since ETH does not have a hospital itself, we must integrate clinical partners into the Bachelor program to a stronger extent and continue improving the quality of the course”.

Over the long term, ETH is keen to be involved in further medical training for those students looking to qualify as specialist doctors. To this end, the MedLAB has already been set up, which will allow either one or two doctors to conduct a research project each year. “We would be delighted if some of our graduates returned to ETH at some point to undertake clinical research with us”, comments Rector Springmann.