'Lost medic' awarded degree after 53 years
- Published
Dr Judith Coles collected the degree she began 53 years ago
A "lost medic" has celebrated her 75th birthday by finally graduating with the degree she began 53 years ago.
In 1966, Dr Judith Coles travelled from her north-west London home to study at the University of St Andrews.
She was not awarded for her years of study due to complications with the University of Dundee separating from the University of St Andrews in 1967.
She worked in hospitals for nearly five decades before retiring in 2017.
Dr Coles was reunited with many of her St Andrews classmates in May who were marking 50 years since their graduation.
At the Class of '72 reunion, she learned about "lost medics" who had transferred to clinical training in other universities in 1969 and to Dundee in 1970.
This meant they had left St Andrews without any academic award to acknowledge their studies there.
While many of her fellow students completed their clinical training in Dundee, family circumstances meant she moved to Sheffield University where she gained her medical degree in 1972.
"I learned that, in 2003, this had been recognised by the University of St Andrews as an anomaly which should be put right, and the university had then awarded a BSc to those doctors who were traced," she said.
"I had missed out on this but was encouraged to contact the university to see if this could be remedied for me too.
"The happy result is my graduation just happens to take place on my 75th birthday as well!
"I am very grateful and proud to have been given the opportunity to study at St Andrews for three years, and I am delighted to have my time there and academic achievements formally recognised."
Dr Coles applied to study at St Andrews after discovering that only 10% of places at London medical schools were being awarded to women.
The graduation procession at St Andrews
Having never travelled any further north than Derbyshire, she made the 12-hour-long train journey to the Old Grey Toun and wondered "where on earth (she) had come to".
She began her course in physiology with hopes of transferring to study medicine at a later date.
During her degree, Dr Coles stayed in student lodgings run by "the formidable" Mrs Dillon and her daughter in Murray Park with seven other girls sharing just one bathroom.
With a warning that "no man was ever to put a foot over the doorstep" and just one bath a week, her experience of student life was very different to that of today's students.
But she said her decision to study in St Andrews was "the best thing that could have happened to me".
After performing well and persuading the medical school to enrol her, she completed the medical pre-clinical course and second MB exams in 1969.
She said: "The medical teaching I received was excellent, much of it in the old Bute Medical Building, and laid the strongest foundation and inspiration for my subsequent medical career."
After working in Sheffield for another four years and training towards becoming a hospital physician, Dr Coles completed her higher specialist training at the Middlesex Hospital in London.
In 1983 she was appointed consultant and honorary senior lecturer in geriatric medicine at St George's Teaching Hospital and Medical School in Tooting.
She was involved in running acute in-patient, rehabilitation and community services. She also taught at the medical school, trained junior doctors and specialty registrars, and held management positions in the hospital trust.