Why British doctors hold bachelor's degrees and American doctors hold doctorates
A British-trained doctor usually graduates with two bachelor's degrees, in medicine and surgery, yet is still called Dr. An American doctor gets an MD. The qualifications count as equivalent. The split goes back to the 19th century, when North American schools dropped the English model and copied Scotland's instead.
The Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery is the standard first medical qualification in Britain and many former parts of the British Empire. The two degrees are normally awarded together after five or six years of study, although graduates in related subjects can sometimes take an accelerated four-year route. The initials vary enormously, including MBBS, MB ChB, MB BCh and BM BS. The differences reflect tradition, often whether the university names its degrees in Latin or English, rather than any gap in level.
Early medical schools in North America, among them Harvard, Pennsylvania, Columbia and Toronto, originally awarded the Bachelor of Medicine too, since many of their founders had trained in England and Scotland. English universities capped medical training with the bachelor's degree, while Scottish ones awarded the Doctor of Medicine. In the mid-1800s regulators in Britain began requiring doctors to hold both the medicine and surgery bachelor's degrees. Over the same century North American schools switched to Scotland's approach and began awarding MDs.
In countries that kept the British system, an MD means something different: a higher doctorate earned through research and a thesis. Holders of the bachelor's degrees still use the title Dr as a courtesy. Australia shows the tension. Its MBBS degrees had been ranked as bachelor's qualifications even though most had become graduate-entry programmes, and in 2011 the University of Melbourne became the first to offer an MD as its basic medical degree.
The format varies from country to country. Egyptian students spend seven years in total, including two of compulsory clinical rotations before the degree is issued. In India the MBBS runs five and a half years, ending in a year-long internship, and entry is decided by a national exam, the NEET-UG. As of August 2025, 780 recognised colleges offered 118,148 places. China awards a Bachelor of Medicine, with 247 universities authorised to grant medical degrees.
Source: Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery
