Royal Free Association

Founded in 1998, the Royal Free Association now has over 4,000 members. It was started by members of the Royal Free Hospital Medical School and the school’s Old Students' Association when the Royal Free and University College School of Medicine was established. It aims to provide a forum for past students to participate in and support social, educational, and charitable activities, preserve the history and promote good relations between the school and hospital.

Annual general meeting and clinical day

The next Annual General Meeting and Clinical Day will be held on Thursday 16th November 2023. The annual Formal Dinner will be held on Wednesday 15th November 2023. Details and booking forms will be circulated in due course.

Contact us

To contact the Royal Free Association please email: rfassociation@gmail.com or telephone: 01406 540647.

Royal Free Association newsletters

Each year we produce a newsletter to keep our members up-to-date with what is happening at the association. You can find past copies of our newsletter below.

Royal Free Association - Financial Support for Medical Students

Members of the RFA support a student Hardship fund which provides help to students who encounter financial difficulties during the course of their studies. Annually, up to four awards are made available of £500 each.

In addition to the Hardship fund, the RFA also supports four student electives each year of £500 and two awards for graduate students in their penultimate year of study of £1,000 each. These are allocated by the Elective Bursary Committee.

How to Apply for Hardship Funds and Student Elective Support

The Medical School has recently been working with students on revising the application process to make it much easier for students to apply and access funds. This has moved from a paper form to online: ‘Moodle’ is the web-based learning platform students use for all their UCL educational resources, timetables etc. Royal Free Association bursaries will also be applied for via Moodle. An example of the Moodle application webpage can be seen here – students also upload any supporting documents which are then sent to the Student Support team in the Medical School. Please contact them for any further information or to apply for funds: medsch.student-support@ucl.ac.uk. Or you can access Moodle directly with a UCL login.

Free comment newsletters

Dr Robert Wilkins, who attended the Royal Free from 1961-1966, has shared copies of the Royal Free Hospital school of medicine students' newspaper from 1963 with us. Volume 1, number 1, price 1d, was published on 17 October 1963. There are also some photos from the time in our gallery.

If you would like to find out more, or contact Robert, his email address is rwilkins55@hotmail.com.

Please take a look at the links below.

Graduate newsletters

Some of our graduates produce newsletters for their own years, and below you will find some that have been shared with us: