The Charles Darwin University Medicine course

Years 1 and 2 are taught through problem-based learning, which the AMC's 2024 report calls the core of the first two years. Each semester is a single 16-week unit worth 40 credit points. CDU says its units are larger than most university units because the sciences, clinical skills and professional topics are taught and assessed together. Lectures, tutorials and practical classes are there to support the cases.

CDU describes the curriculum as integrated in two directions. Within a unit, the disciplines are taught around the same cases. Between units, ideas come back with more complexity, and basic science is revised and applied again in the clinical years, an approach CDU calls a spiral curriculum. The design follows adult learning principles, such as learning through problems and direct experience. Year 1 is more directed and structured, and later years expect you to steer more of your own learning.

Attendance is expected at every session and is compulsory for labs, tutorials and clinical attachments. Early on, much of your study is directed self-learning: set reading, lecture and lab material and compulsory online modules. In the clinical years there is less formal teaching, and self-directed learning, where you decide what to study with guidance from tutors and supervisors, becomes essential.

From Year 3 you learn as a member of the clinical team on wards and in outpatient clinics, specialist rooms, operating theatres, emergency departments and community health services. What you see depends on who comes in, so one student may meet many patients with a condition while another meets none. Attachment guides and a list of core conditions set out what everyone should cover, and some attachments add tutorials or workshops. Online scientific streams let you solve clinical case studies with classmates, keeping your science current.

CDU's Program at a Glance puts average contact time in Years 1 and 2 at 25 to 30 hours a week, and expects at least as much again in self-study. The first cohort's 2026 timetable fits that figure, with about 30 timetabled hours in a typical week. Most days start between 8am and 9am and finish around 4pm or 5pm, with some free study periods. The admissions guide warns that this leaves little room for paid work.

The year has fixed breaks: a week in April, a week in September, three weeks across June and July, and nine weeks at the end of each year. The 2027 intake starts on 8 February 2027.

CDU publishes each timetable about six weeks before teaching starts, so the latest full example is the first cohort's 2026 year. Semester 1 teaching ran from 2 February to 29 May, with PBL from the first week and lectures from 9 February, then a revision week and exams from 8 to 19 June. Semester 2 runs from 13 July to 30 October, with exams from 9 to 20 November. A typical semester 1 week in 2026 looked like this:

• Monday: three one-hour lectures, then a three-hour PBL session from 2pm.
• Tuesday: a lecture, a two-hour lecture-workshop and, in most weeks, a two-hour tutorial.
• Wednesday and Thursday: three workshops a day, from 9am to noon, 1pm to 2.30pm and 2.30pm to 5pm.
• Friday: in most weeks, a two-hour seminar and a one-hour revision session, then the second PBL session of the week from 2.30pm.

Anatomy runs through all four Year 1 and 2 units, taught with physiology, biochemistry, pathology and pharmacology for each body system as you reach it. Lab classes are where you study the body's three-dimensional structure, and the program has its own Anatomy and Histology Coordinator. Each unit includes a one-hour anatomy practical exam.

In the first cohort's 2026 timetable, semester 2 had a two-hour anatomy workshop every Tuesday morning and two 90-minute anatomy lab preparation sessions a week, on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Three-hour lab classes ran on most Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

Your first patients are simulated. From semester 1, bedside teaching uses simulated participants, so you can practise taking a history and examining someone in a setting that protects real patients. Across the course, clinical skills sessions use classmates, simulated patients and real patients.

You also visit real services before Year 3. For the on-campus years, CDU's FAQ lists one-day observation placements: a community service organisation in semester 1, then a general practice or Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (ACCHO) in semester 2. An ACCHO is a primary health care service run by its local Aboriginal community. Year 1 units include community visits, and Year 2 units add procedural skills and sessions in hospitals and primary care.

Full-time clinical work starts in Year 3, when you join teams on placement. Year 4 expects clinical reasoning and procedures at a higher level of complexity and independence, and Year 5 builds towards near-independent practice. The aim is readiness for internship, the first supervised year of work as a doctor after graduating, also called postgraduate year 1 (PGY1).

Each unit sets its own assessment, described in its unit guidebook and in CDU's online unit catalogue. Most tasks combine disciplines, although the clinical units also have discipline-specific assessments. Formative assessments carry no mark and give you feedback before the tasks that count. Summative assessments make up your grade, and some are hurdles: you must pass or satisfactorily complete them to progress.

Summative methods listed for the MD include written exams with multiple-choice, extended matching, short-answer and modified essay questions, and written assignments. Clinical assessments include OSCEs, the mini-CEX, where a supervisor watches you with a patient and rates the encounter, case-based learning tasks, structured clinical assessments and entrustable professional activities (EPAs). An EPA is a routine clinical task for which a supervisor decides how far you can be trusted to work unsupervised. Professional behaviour is assessed throughout, alongside the MD portfolio, a procedural skills log and logbooks.

Written exams and OSCEs are standard set: a group of content experts reviews each question and station to fix the pass standard, as the AMC requires. Weightings can change from one year to the next. In the first cohort's 2026 version of MED101, the OSCE was pass-or-fail and the anatomy practical and two 90-minute papers were worth 20% each.

Units are taken in order, and each must be passed before the next. Every Year 1 and 2 unit mixes written papers, an anatomy practical exam, population health work and an OSCE. Alongside them sit pass-or-fail hurdles: a PBL participation report, Personal and Professional Development tasks, a First Nations Culture and Health task and two 10-minute portfolio presentations. Professional behaviour is a hurdle too, including at least 80% attendance and participation at workshops and practical sessions. In 2027, your first unit, MED101, is weighted like this:

• Papers A and B: one-hour short-answer and multiple-choice papers, 10% each.
• Population health: a 1,500-word assignment (10%) and two 30-minute quizzes (5% between them).
• Paper C: a one-hour anatomy practical exam, 15%.
• Paper D, a 90-minute short-answer and modified essay paper, and Paper E, a 90-minute multiple-choice paper: 15% each.
• OSCE: one hour, 20%.
• Pass-or-fail: a 500-word Medicine in Context reflection, plus the hurdles above.
• MED112 shifts the balance: three quizzes (10%), 20% each for the anatomy practical and Papers D and E, and a pass-or-fail OSCE.

Years 3 to 5 are delivered entirely through clinical placements, so you will not be based on campus. Placements run as blocks: you spend several consecutive weeks or months at one site, then rotate to the next. CDU counts around 95 weeks of placement in community, primary care and hospital settings across the Northern Territory's five regions. It says staff will help you get ready for each placement, manage it and talk it through afterwards.

Before any placement you must be compliant: immunisations, a national police check, a Working with Children clearance and fitness-to-practise requirements. You arrange and pay for the vaccinations and clearances yourself, and CDU's admissions guide adds a senior first aid certificate to these placement costs. CDU's Faculty of Health warns that clearances can take up to three months and immunisations up to eight, so start once you enrol. You must also be registered as a student with Ahpra.

CDU says accommodation is arranged for each attachment outside Darwin. You still pay travel, accommodation and living costs on rural and remote placements, with subsidies, scholarships and other support to help.

The AMC assessed the course in 2024, before any student had enrolled. CDU then had an overarching agreement for clinical places with NT Health, the Northern Territory Government's health department, whose five regional health services include six hospitals and 74 primary care clinics. It also had contracts with Darwin Private Hospital, Palmerston GP Super Clinic and ACCHOs. Danila Dilba Health Service in Darwin and Central Australian Aboriginal Congress in Alice Springs had committed to supervising Year 3 to 5 students.

The AMC also recorded open questions. Many of the same sites and supervisors already teach Flinders University's NT Medical Program students, capacity for both programs had not been agreed, and it was unclear how placements would be allocated. It heard of significant limits on accommodation and teaching infrastructure at the planned regional and rural sites.

One condition asked CDU to develop a model with Flinders and NT Health for distributing students from both programs across NT health services, with a placement plan due in May 2025. Another asks for evidence of suitable teaching infrastructure and student accommodation at regional and rural sites by 2027.

Medical students are based in the Centre for Better Health Futures, a three-storey, 3,684-square-metre teaching and research building on the Casuarina campus that opened to students in 2026. You share it with students from about ten health professions, including nursing, allied health and pharmacy, which gives you chances to learn alongside them. Level 3 is reserved for medical students, with clinical training rooms and self-study space you can use after hours.

The building has a simulated emergency department, a simulated hospital ward, and preclinical and clinical simulation spaces with virtual reality and mobile technology. CDU says students at its Nhulunbuy, Katherine and Alice Springs campuses can use that technology too.

Simulated-patient training and sessions are held in the Blue 8 (Garrwa) building at Casuarina. All required medical textbooks are available online at no cost through your reading lists on Learnline, CDU's online learning system, which also holds unit materials and practice questions.

CDU describes the CDU Menzies Medical Program (CMMP) as small and close-knit, with direct access to academic staff. The CMMP Mentoring and Portfolio Program runs from first year to graduation. Mentors guide you on professional development, cultural safety, clinical communication, wellbeing and career planning, while your portfolio records your growth across the curriculum themes. In each early unit, Professional Advisors support the portfolio work.

You are paired with a peer advisor who checks in every other week, and peer advisors run group sessions to prepare for assignments and exams. If you are struggling or fail a unit, CDU advises starting with a meeting with the Year Coordinator, the Medical Program Course Coordinator or the Medical Program Student Support team. A Clinical Placement Coordinator sits in the program's professional team.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the program has its own First Nations Medical Student Advisor. CDU adds its First Nations Student Support Team and a tutorial program offering free individual and group tutoring of 1 to 8 hours a week to eligible students. The Gurinbey Centre at Casuarina is a culturally safe space with computers, a kitchen, a sensory space and after-hours access. A Larrakia Academic-in-Residence, from the Traditional Custodians of the Darwin area, offers culturally informed guidance to all students.

The program has its own Medical Students Association, and you can also join the Australian Medical Students' Association (AMSA), the national body for medical students.