The Adelaide Medicine course

The six years are built on four domains, strands of learning that run from start to finish: Science and Scholarship, Clinical Practice, Health and Society, and Professionalism and Leadership. Most semesters in Years 1 to 3 are a single course covering all four. So the semester on the blood, heart and lungs also teaches you to examine those systems and apply population data to their diseases. It covers the ethical and social issues their patients face too.

The main group method is Scenario-Based Learning (SBL), Adelaide's form of case-based learning. The 2026 catalogue entry for Medical Studies 2A calls it discovery learning: you take a patient case and, as a group, work out the mechanisms behind it and what to do next. Lectures in pathology, anatomy, physiology and pharmacology support the scenarios.

In the 2025 outlines, first-semester scenarios came in fortnightly blocks, introduced one week and explored the next. From the second semester a new scenario arrived each week, and groups of typically four to eight worked on it across two workshops. Those groups share a much bigger room: the 2026 timetable's workshop classes hold about 80 students, twice a week from semester 2 of Year 1 through Year 2. The AMC reported in 2022 that the case sessions had moved to this large-group format because of COVID-19.

Two threads run alongside. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health runs through the course, starting in Year 1 with the diversity of Indigenous histories and cultures and the continuing effects of colonisation on health. Interprofessional learning puts you alongside students from other health courses, such as nursing, including in simulated scenarios.

From Year 4 learning is mainly experiential: you join clinical teams on wards and in clinics, backed by tutorials, workshops, simulation and online modules.

The 2026 class timetable shows a Year 1 week. Scheduled classes came to about 13 hours a week in each semester, and some lecture content is online video. The rest is private study: the 2025 outlines put a full-time load at an average of 48 hours a week, classes included.

In 2026, Year 3 had a full placement day every Wednesday in both semesters. In semester 2 the timetable added clinical sessions on most Tuesdays, from about 9am to 2pm, in groups of 10 to 12. From Year 4 you are on placement full time, and the 2025 outlines expected an average 48-hour week, including private study but not after-hours call.

• Lectures for the whole year group: seven a week in semester 1 and four in semester 2.
• Workshops for about 80 students at a time: one two-hour session a week in semester 1, two in semester 2.
• In Year 1, a two-hour clinical class every Tuesday, in a group of about 20.
• A practical class in groups of about 40, mostly in the Helen Mayo South building: an hour a week in semester 1, two hours in semester 2.
• A seminar in a group of about 27, lasting 80 minutes in semester 1 and an hour in semester 2.

Anatomy is taught inside the Year 1 and Year 2 courses, with the systems you are studying. Medical Studies 1 covers the blood, heart and lungs, 2A the nervous and musculoskeletal systems, and 2B the endocrine, digestive and urinary systems. In the 2025 outlines the practicals were multidisciplinary: in Medical Studies 2A, for example, they explored anatomy, histology, physiology and pathology together.

Anatomy returns in Year 4: the 2025 surgery course included anatomy practicals, and its musculoskeletal workshops assessed anatomy alongside examination, plastering, injection and aspiration. Adelaide University's 2027 Health study guide describes a wet and dry anatomy lab for its health students. Adelaide University's Body Donation Program runs the central mortuary for all bodies donated for study and teaching in South Australia. Staff and students take part in an annual memorial service for donors.

The BMS page promises patient contact from the first year. In Years 1 and 2 that is mostly simulated: in weekly clinical sessions you interview and examine simulated patients, adding new body systems each semester. Much of this happens in the Adelaide Health Simulation centre.

In 2025, real patients joined clinician-led discussions with students about the personal and social side of their illness during Early Clinical Interaction seminars in Medical Studies 1. These seminars also brought in nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, physiotherapists, psychologists and social workers who manage the conditions in that week's scenarios.

Placements with real patients begin in Year 3: a day a week in a general practice in semester 1, practising interviews, examinations and basic procedures under supervision. In semester 2 the 2025 outline set two full days a week in general practice and hospital, building full and focused histories and examinations. In 2024 a small Kulpi Minupa group met patients earlier, in Port Augusta (see Electives).

Courses build in sequence, with earlier courses as prerequisites, so you must pass each stage to move on. The 2026 catalogue lists each course's task types, from multiple choice questions, exams, skills demonstrations and assignments to professional simulations and workplace-based assessments, mostly without published weightings.

In the 2025 outlines every course was assessed across the four domains. You had to reach the minimum standard in each, because a strong domain could not make up for a weak one. Most tasks were pass or fail hurdles. Written tests mixed multiple choice, short answer and data analysis questions, with standard-set pass marks, calculated for each exam rather than fixed. From Year 2 the mid-semester test made up 30% of the combined test result and the end-of-semester test 70%.

Clinical skills are signed off in stages. In 2025, Foundations of Medicine students recorded four simulated clinical encounters and passed checks such as vital signs and hand hygiene. From Medical Studies 1, courses used a series of clinical competencies. The AMC heard in 2023 that the first cohort's early skills were signed off this way rather than in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). In an OSCE you rotate through timed stations, each testing one task. By 2025, Transition to Clinical Studies ended with an OSCE you had to pass.

On placement, supervisors assess you at work. In Year 3 in 2025 this meant mini clinical evaluation exercises, in which a supervisor watches you with a patient, plus reports, reflections and a clinical logbook.

For Year 4, the 2026 overview of the surgery course lists written assignments, oral presentations, placement assessments, a multiple choice test and an OSCE. The 2025 Year 4 outlines add the detail: Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), key tasks such as assessing a patient, observed with feedback, and a supervisor report for each block. In each course, multiple choice testing and an OSCE were weighted equally: you needed a standard-set score of at least 50 across both and 45 in each.

• Professional behaviour counts throughout. The 2025 outlines required on-time work and at least 80% attendance at core group sessions such as workshops and practicals. The Year 5 course pages cite a policy called Assessment of Professionalism in the MD.
• In 2023 the AMC noted that progression rules for Years 4 to 6 were not yet settled, and that assessment in the rural year appeared to differ from the city's.
• In 2023 the AMC also noted that feedback included optional mock OSCEs run with the simulation centre.

For Years 1 to 3 you are based on the Adelaide City Campus, and Year 3 general practice placements are spread across greater Adelaide. In the MD years, city placements are in the public hospitals listed below, general practices and community settings. Placements can include time usually regarded as after hours, and travel to them across greater Adelaide is at your own cost.

Placements in SA Health facilities, South Australia's public health system, run under an agreement with the Minister for Health, so you sign a deed poll promising to keep patient information confidential. You also need criminal history and working with children checks, immunisations and tuberculosis screening. When you enrol you are registered as a student through the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), the national agency that handles registration for health practitioners. Scope of Practice documents set out what students in each year may do.

Rural placement is a condition of enrolment. The Bachelor of Medical Studies page says every Commonwealth supported student, meaning a domestic student in a government-subsidised place, must do at least four weeks rurally before graduating. It adds that 30% of all domestic students must spend a full clinical year in a rural location, with a random ballot of Commonwealth supported students if too few volunteer. Both degree pages warn that the rules can change with federal funding agreements.

Older documents give other rules: the University of Adelaide's 2025 program rules said half of Commonwealth supported students needed four rural weeks and a quarter a rural year. Counts of the rural Year 5 vary too. The AMC's 2022 report put it at about 45 students, or 30% of the cohort, in one passage and about 25% in another. The Rural Clinical School's 2024 report counted 41 students, and in 2026 the catalogue's class lists for the rural Year 5 courses showed about 40 enrolled.

The Adelaide Rural Clinical School (ARCS) runs rural placements in MD Years 4 to 6 lasting four, eight or 36 weeks. Year 4 surgery can be done in a country hospital. The ARCS program page and the 2026 surgery course give eight weeks, though the Port Augusta entry on the ARCS Locations page and older reports say nine. The Year 5 Integrated Program follows the normal academic calendar, and Year 6 selective placements, which you choose, last four weeks. Rural accommodation is free, furnished and has internet, and you receive a living allowance.

Sources count the rural sites differently. The Doctor of Medicine page mentions six rural clinical sites for Year 5, while ARCS says it runs placements at twelve sites and lists twelve Year 5 locations. Its 2024 report says Year 5 students worked in 22 towns across rural South Australia, Broken Hill and Alice Springs.

The first three years have no electives: all 144 units of the BMS are core. In Year 5, students approved for exchange can spend one semester at Aarhus University in Denmark (MDST5009, recoded MEDI5007 for 2027). The exchange course has the same learning outcomes as Women's and Children's Health and is assessed half by multiple choice questions and half by professional simulation.

In Year 6 the Doctor of Medicine page says you choose a preferred discipline to explore through a professional placement, locally, interstate or overseas. The Rural Clinical School's four-week Year 6 selectives run in community and outpatient settings, and it can help you find a placement in another rural town. The AMC heard in 2023 that international electives and exchanges had returned to pre-COVID-19 levels.

There was also an early-years rural option in 2024. The Rural Clinical School's Kulpi Minupa program took Year 2 students to Port Augusta in semester 1 and Year 1 students in semester 2, for 8 to 12 weeks. Students kept up their usual course, with extra support and early clinical experience.

The AHMS building, at the corner of North Terrace and George Street, was purpose-built in 2017 in the Adelaide BioMed City precinct. It sits beside the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). It holds classrooms, study spaces, staff offices and the simulation centre. Most Years 1 to 3 classes are here in the 2026 timetable, with many practicals in the Helen Mayo South building.

Adelaide Health Simulation is a multi-floor centre whose suites copy real hospital environments. They have working oxygen and suction, nurse call, an integrated electronic medical record and equipment matching the local health networks. Manikins range from newborns to adults, and 24 assessment rooms have full audio-visual recording for clinical exams. The 2025 admissions guide also mentions an immersion lab using 360-degree technology. The College of Health says the centre holds two accreditations from the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

In 2023 the AMC saw modern teaching facilities and student spaces at Lyell McEwin Hospital. At the Royal Adelaide Hospital, it found student spaces shared with hospital staff and spread through the building. Port Pirie has a simulation centre used for rural assessments (AMC, 2022), and Broken Hill has a simulation lab.

In 2022 the AMC found a precinct officer at each clinical site handling onboarding, orientation and placement requirements, but not wellbeing. It also found a Student Welfare academic with no assessment role guiding Years 1 to 3 students towards help. It asked the school to confirm its planned Clinical Deans, or another way to give students on placement wellbeing support kept separate from progression decisions. An August 2026 university news item names a Clinical Dean of Medicine.

On rural placements each centre usually has a local Student Support Coordinator, who handles accommodation, timetabling and orientation, and a Clinical Academic who supervises and mentors you. The AMC commended this pastoral support in 2022. The student rural health club, the Adelaide University Rural Health Alliance, runs trips, school visits and social events. The $5,000 Hoopmann Rural Medicine Scholarship helps Commonwealth supported students in financial need who will do a rural placement the next year.

Year 1 teaches you to find self-care resources for yourself and your peers. Students with a disability can get adjustments through the university's counselling and disability services. In 2022 the AMC also found that placement allocation took account of disability access plans and caring responsibilities. In 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students had a culturally safe study room in the AHMS building. The AMC found, though, that the gap left when a dedicated support position was centralised had not yet been addressed.