Medical Student Newspaper
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Medical Student Newspaper (MS) is a free newspaper written and published by medical students, for medical students. MS was founded in 2004 to unite the 10,000+ medical students across London's five medical schools. The newspaper is available free at all of London's medical school campuses but is published independently.
[edit] History
Founded in March 2004 by Johann Malawana (Medical Students Officer of ULU) and Lila Allen (Editor of London Student) as a student led project for medical students within the University of London to develop their medical journalism skills.
Several months after its birth, Rohin Francis of St. George's Hospital Medical School took over as editor-in-chief and expanded the newspaper considerably. In its first full year of existence, MS won the 2005 Daily Mirror and National Union of Students, National Student Journalism Award for Best Small Budget Publication in the UK, following this with a Runner Up certificate in the same category in 2006.
Ferras Alwan, a student at Barts and The London took over the reins of editor-in-chief in the academic year 2005-06. He was succeeded by Emma-Jane Smith, of Royal Free and University College Medical School for 2006-2007. The current editor in chief is Joanne Ooi, of King's College London.
Since its inception, a recurring topic in the newspaper has been Modernising Medical Careers and the impact it is having on medical students and junior doctors.
Dr. Francis' writing in MS won him three nominations in the 2006 Guardian Student Media Awards. He was chosen as Diversity writer of the year, runner-up Columnist of the year and nominee in the Feature writer of the year category.
[edit] Audience
The key appeal of MS is that it remains the only large-scale medical publication in Britain written and edited entirely by full-time medical students, in contrast to other journals and magazines written by doctors or full-time journalists. This factor has ensured MS's popularity at a grass-roots level amongst London's medics. It has been instrumental in publicizing and helping student causes as well as exposing threats to medical student welfare.
