Styles of Medicine courses
Although all of the courses available at all of the UK medical schools will enable you to provisionally register with the GMC and enter the Foundation Doctor training programme, each course is different.
The first thing to note is simply that the 'type' of degree offered has nothting to do with the style of course. Whether you get a BM, 1st BM, BMBS, MBBS, BMChB, MBChB, or any other variant is simply the preference of the university. If you really must know, BM (or MB) stands for Bachelor of Medicine, BS stands for Bachelor of Surgery, and ChB (or BCh) stands for Bachelor of Chiurgery (which is a really old word for surgery). 1st BM denotes the pre-clinical part of your studies, and is awarded by Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial.
What does make a difference is when you see BSc, BA, or BMedSci within that bunch of letters. (hons) simply means that the degree was passed with honours. They stand for Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Art, and Bachelor of Medical Science respectively, and in terms of equivalence, they all mean the same thing - the equivalent of a standard 3-year degree. You can get MSc or MA, and these simply mean 'Master of' rather than 'Bachelor of'. How they make a difference to you is that if you see them in the 'qualification gained' section of a prospectus, it means that you will be undertaking an intercalated degree in a related area, as well as doing your medical degree.
