Medicinæ Baccalaureus et Baccalaureus Chirurgiæ = MBBCh

My grand-uncle made a snide passing comment the other day with regards to the meaning to my degree! Bamboozled painfully! Well, being the lazy person and care-what-not attitude of mine, it striked me how ignorant i could be some times (most of the time) that I myself did'nt even know the actual meaning of the course which i'm enrolled in. Shame on me. And I still managed to convince people that i'm a 3rd year medical student! Embarrassing.

So, well, after trawling through the www, FINALLY (hmmph!), I've managed to come up with this trivia:

1. Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, a translation of its latin equivalent (above), may be abbreviated as 'MBBChir, MBBCh, MBChB, BMBS, MBBS'; all denoting a degree in medicine and surgery.

2. These degrees are not offered in the United States, Canada and other countries. In the United States a medical student typically completes a bachelor's degree (not necessarily in science) during which they take courses meeting pre-medical requirements before pursuing a medical doctorate.

3. The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, meanwhile, awards 3 degrees- MB BCh BAO, due to its previous historic legislation on having a final obstetrics examination.

4. Most Asian universties prefer 'MBBS', notably Singapore, Malaysia, India, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

5. All medical schools in Wales award MB BCh!

Well, what about that!

-excerpts lifted off wikipedia-