Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 2495 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AT LEEDS | 1971 | 1971-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Sound Duration: 27 mins Credits: University of Leeds Subject: Education |
| Summary A film made by the Audio Visual Department at Leeds University as a visual prospectus for potential undergraduates for the Medical School. The film uses sequences from a student's academic life, interviews with current scholars, and a commentary to explain what this course and university have to offer and how the students have interacted with university life. |
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Description
A film made by the Audio Visual Department at Leeds University as a visual prospectus for potential undergraduates for the Medical School. The film uses sequences from a student's academic life, interviews with current scholars, and a commentary to explain what this course and university have to offer and how the students have interacted with university life.
Title - The Medical School At Leeds
The film opens with a close up of one of the male students singing in a 'revue...
A film made by the Audio Visual Department at Leeds University as a visual prospectus for potential undergraduates for the Medical School. The film uses sequences from a student's academic life, interviews with current scholars, and a commentary to explain what this course and university have to offer and how the students have interacted with university life.
Title - The Medical School At Leeds
The film opens with a close up of one of the male students singing in a 'revue style' performance on stage. It is a comical song referring to the job of a medic and the things which they encounter, and the song is performed to the melody of "The Sound of Music's" song "These Are a Few of My Favourite Things," There is also a sign advertising the night: Medics Concert Wednesday 25th March 7:30-1:00am Bar Extensions to 12:00am Tickets £7.
Student doctors are shown in a delivery room, and the voiceover is from a biology lecture. The next scene features a game of rugby, and when a player is injured, a medic runs out onto the field. Again, the voiceover is from part of a lecture, and the scenes relate the knowledge gained during study to practical situations in which the students will find themselves later on.
Moving in the film highlights the architecture of the various buildings that make up the Medical School including St James Hospital which is used for practical teaching, and with 1300 beds, is the largest general teaching hospital in the UK. There is a shot of a medical student being taught how to give an injection directly into someone's vein. Following this are close-ups of brain dissections being carried out by the students in the laboratory. This occurs while the commentary explains the different aspects of teaching, such as practical, tutorial and lecture, of the course. Other classroom labs are shown while students study biology and chemistry. Following this, the film highlights some of the sites of the city, specifically the modern buildings in the city centre, as well as sports teams like Leeds United.
A teacher examines a patient in a hospital bed, and the film cuts back to part of the comedy review. Next, there is a lecture taking place in one of the university lecture halls. A student gives his professors many tricky questions about dermatology, and laughs are had as they struggle for definite answers, showing that scientific knowledge is always in a state of change.
The University also offers access to a cabin in the Lake District, and students can be seen walking in the snow-covered countryside. They take part in rock climbing and orienteering. Back at the University, the commentary points out lessons also take place in small group discussions, and here about eight students are discussing various issues with their tutor. There are also various forms of recreation and entertainment, and one of the students entertains his colleagues by playing an acoustic guitar and singing a song with surgical related lyrics. This leads to a scene in which a heart valve is shown, and the commentary notes that surgical procedures are constantly being advanced by those at Leeds University. It is also a research university, and experiments are performed. Men ride bikes in a controlled setting while their vitals are recorded for research.
Some of the students are walking in the Dales, and the song from the comedy review is heard on the soundtrack. Leeds Uni also offers weekly walks through the Physical Education department.
Part of the student's training involves house visits to examine elderly or immobile patients. Here, a male student examines a man and a woman at their homes. This is followed by students who speak about the different type of accommodation offered to students who choose to study this course. Both flats and halls are offered, and both exterior and interior scenes are shown of both types of accommodation. This includes Bodington Hall, opened by Henry Price in 1964. For students who choose residents halls, they a large dining hall to share. Study facilities are also shown including the Medical School Library. In the library foyer, the Dean of the Medical School reads out the exam results, which has become a tradition highlighting the high achievements of students attending this university.
After gaining their qualifications, Leeds University students have the opportunity to go onto gain a variety of practical experience, and some of the new residents can be seen in a hospital exam room. Again, the soundtrack plays the final verse of the song performed at the comedy review.
Title - The End
Copyright University of Leeds 1971
Context
This is one of a number of films made by the Audio Visual Department at Leeds University throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. The head of the AVD was John Murray, who had previously worked for the Yorkshire Film Company and was, around this time, also the Chairman of the Film Panel of the Yorkshire Arts Association. John went on to form Honley Films, and is still working for the Honley Methodist Church Newsletter and the Honley Village Community Trust Flyer – see also the Context for...
This is one of a number of films made by the Audio Visual Department at Leeds University throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. The head of the AVD was John Murray, who had previously worked for the Yorkshire Film Company and was, around this time, also the Chairman of the Film Panel of the Yorkshire Arts Association. John went on to form Honley Films, and is still working for the Honley Methodist Church Newsletter and the Honley Village Community Trust Flyer – see also the Context for Berry Brow (1965). For more on the Audio Visual Department at the University see the Context for Leeds University Presents 23 Minutes (c.1983).
In the same year that this film was made the AVD also made a more general promotional film for the University, Time to Do (1971), and similar promotional films in later years: Talk about Leeds (c.1978) and Leeds University Presents 23 Minutes (c.1983). They also made other films that relate specifically to the Medical School, Lubrication of Joints (1976) and Cancer of the Prostate (1977). Prior to the setting up of the AVD, several films were made of work from the Dental School: History made at Leeds Dental School (1956-57), Casting with Vacuum and The Oral Vibrator (1961). These historic films were recently donated to the YFA by Norman Kidd, a Dental Mechanic at Leeds Dental School, who was heavily involved in making the films, first under Professor T Talmage Read and then with his successor Professor F E Hopper. The School of Medicine, now the Faculty of Medicine and Health, was in fact the first part of the university to be founded, back in 1831, before the Yorkshire College which was to become the University. For more on the history of the University see the Context for The University Leeds (1925). For a film that is presumably aimed at encouraging prospective students to choose Leeds University there are some quite graphic scenes, most notably of the giving birth. Now of course it is not uncommon to see the filming of live operations – including live births – on television, but sensibilities were certainly quite different back in the early 1970s, as evidenced in the comparatively genteel BBC series Emergency Ward 10 which had recently ended: unlike the much more graphic viewing established by the likes of ER. The film also shows some pioneering techniques that highlight the international status of the department which continues to this day. Notable among these is the open hearted surgery. It is intriguing that in the year this film was made, 1971, the cardiac surgeon Marian Ionescu was appointed Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at both the General Infirmary and Killingbeck Hospital in Leeds as well as Reader in Surgery at the University. Ionescu had escaped from his native Romania in 1965, driving across into Italy by night in a Fiat 600. When his escape was learned of by Leeds surgeon Mr G.H.Wooler, he endeavoured to find a position for Ionescu in Leeds, where he continued to develop his work in open heart surgery, and especially the use of artificial heart valves. The entry on Marian Ionescu in Wikipedia provides a good overview of his work at this time. It isn’t clear whether this appointment was made before this film was finished, but it would certainly have made a good selling point for the School of Medicine. The School of Medicine at Leeds is one of the largest in the country and comes out well in the various rankings for universities, 30th in the Times Good University Guide of 2013. One might have thought that with hospital based television programmes proliferating in recent years the medical profession would be an attractive option for students. Yet according to a recent Freedom of Information request by The Sunday Telegraph, across the NHS there is a shortage 4,000 doctors (as well as of 15,000 nurses). The Telegraph contends that this is “because many medical students are choosing not to pursue careers in such a pressurised environment”, as NHS hospitals have increasingly become. It states that instead many are “switching to easier specialities that let them take on more lucrative private work, such as general practice or anaesthetics, or even moving abroad.” One road out might be to take up comedy as a career, as many medical students have done, such as Phil Hammond, Harry Hill, Riaad Moosa, Graham Chapman and Jonathan Miller. Yet judging by the performances in this film, perhaps none from Leeds. References Norman Kidd, 50 Years a Mason Marian Ionescu NHS hospitals suffer staffing crisis on top of scandals, The Telegraph 4th January 2014 Medicine at The University of Leeds, ranking |
