The CDU / Flinders Medicine course

In the two CDU years you take four units a semester on the Casuarina campus, with course material on Learnline, CDU's online learning system. Science units are assessed by short tests, written case studies or reports and final exams, and chemistry, microbiology and haematology add laboratory practicals.

MD Years 1 and 2 run as body-system blocks. In the 2026 Year 1 timetable, each block of four or five weeks was followed by an assessment week. The core method is team-based learning (TBL), backed by lectures, lab practicals and weekly clinical skills groups.

All Flinders sites teach the same topics, and every student sits the same block and progress tests at the same time, with specialist lectures provided online. In Darwin, several sessions in the 2026 timetables are marked Local Delivery and taught by NT clinicians, such as a GP lecture on cough, a neurology examination class and Friday TBL application sessions.

From MD Year 3 you learn through work-integrated learning, working in clinical teams on placement. Teaching comes through bedside sessions, structured skills workshops and a weekly workshop. The AMC's 2024 assessment describes a Longitudinal Academic Program of teaching that runs through Year 3 alongside placements, and the Transition to Internship Program in Year 4. Both vary in form between sites. The AMC also noted that the NT's Year 3 opens with intensive skills workshops, simulation and 12 progressive clinical skills sessions.

A cardiovascular week in the 2026 Year 1 timetable began on Monday afternoon with a progress test, a paper every year group sits at once. Tuesday brought two-hour clinical skills groups, a yarning session with Uncle Richie and dissection peer teaching. Wednesday was a three-hour dissection, Thursday an ECG session with the NT cardiac team, and Friday the iRAT and tRAT. Medicine 1B, the half-year that week belonged to, lists 93 hours of lectures, 56 of practicals, 67 of workshops, 48 of tutorials and 267 of independent study.

On 2026 Year 3 rotations at Royal Darwin Hospital, students were on the ward until 12:30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and until 16:30 on Tuesday and Thursday. Afternoon teaching at the hospital, also streamed on Teams, covered topics such as anxiety disorders, paediatric surgery and immunisation. The 2027 calendar already books Year 3 teaching on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

In Alice Springs, a 2026 Year 3 week held general practice sessions at Central Australian Aboriginal Congress clinics on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Wednesday afternoon brought Congress teaching and bedside teaching at Alice Springs Hospital, and Friday clinical skills, case-based learning, Grand Rounds and student teaching.

Flinders asks clinical-year students to expect intern-like hours of 37.5 to 50 a week. Timetables give at least one free 24-hour period in seven and no more than one night of after-hours work a week. Night duty is not usually required in Year 3, but at some rural and remote sites you are on call with your supervisor.

Your first anatomy is at CDU. Anatomy and Physiology 1 covers cells and tissues and the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, nervous and endocrine systems. Anatomy and Physiology 2 adds the digestive, reproductive, urinary, lymphatic and immune systems. Each is assessed by five 20-minute tests, a 1,000-word case study and a 90-minute exam.

In the MD, anatomy is taught in the CDU Anatomy Lab alongside the body-system blocks. The 2026 Year 1 timetable lists dissection, dissection peer teaching and practicals during the cardiovascular and respiratory blocks. Medicine 1B also includes an anatomy viva, an oral exam held in the lab.

The 2027 handbook's Darwin offering of Medicine 2A, in MD Year 2, has you dissect the abdomen and then the musculoskeletal system. Each is examined by a lab viva, you complete a workbook linking the dissection to clinical practice, and your dissection group formally reviews each member's contribution. A 2025 NTMP graduate described the cadaver dissection sessions as a privilege.

Patient contact starts with the MD, in pathway Year 3. CDU says placements, and the police check they need, begin with the MD component. In MD Year 1 you are assessed on history-taking interviews in each half-year. You are also assessed on examining the heart and chest with a simulated patient, a community member trained to play one.

Year 1 also takes you into health services. The 2026 timetable included half-day acute placements and a Remote Health Experience day in September. A 2025 Flinders page says Years 1 and 2 begin your contact with remote communities through the Remote Health Experience and a Regional Community Week. You also complete a four-day nursing attachment in Year 1 or early Year 2.

MD Year 2 adds a general practice placement, recorded in a placement and procedural skills logbook; the Darwin offering of Medicine 2B includes 120 hours of clinical placement. Its Transition to Clinical Practice block teaches procedures such as injections, venepuncture and cannulation, and the 2026 timetable closes the block with a week of ward placements.

Most CDU units are graded, and your GPA over the two CDU years decides whether you move into the MD. In the MD, the core topics, Medicine 1A to 4B, and the Advanced Studies research topics are graded pass or fail, which Flinders calls a non-graded pass. Most tasks inside a topic are hurdles. If you take the coursework route instead of a research project, most of the postgraduate topics on offer are graded. Failing one of the main 18-unit topics starts a formal student progress process.

Progress tests are 120-question multiple-choice papers: four a year in MD Years 1 to 3 and two, in the first half, in Year 4. They are for feedback only in Years 1 and 2 and count from Year 3. Each block in Years 1 and 2 also has a multiple-choice block test, and the AMC reported in 2024 that a failed summative assessment can be resat once.

In Years 3 and 4, supervisors complete GAP reports rating you against six criteria. The AMC reported at least three mini clinical evaluation exercises per placement, in which a supervisor watches you with a patient and scores the encounter. Handover presentations are marked against a rubric.

The Year 3 OSCE is the main clinical exam: you rotate through timed stations, each testing a clinical task with a patient. It runs in Darwin and at Bedford Park in Adelaide, with the same stations at the same time. The AMC's report on its 2024 assessment describes eight 10-minute stations, each judged on three domains, with a pass mark of 17 of the 24 judgements. Flinders' own report on the November 2023 OSCE gave 12 minutes per station. You receive an overall score and written feedback on each domain.

Your learning coach portfolio is a hurdle every half-year. Taking more than six consecutive years to finish the MD can count as not meeting academic requirements, and approved leave is capped at four semesters. A break of six months or more may require a Clinical Practice Preparedness refresher topic.

• The 2026 Year 3 timetables include an oral critical appraisal assessment, and Alice Springs students sat practice and mock OSCEs before the real one.
• Flinders' NT program page places the Advanced Studies capstone in the first half of Year 4, while the 2027 handbook lists its tasks under Medicine 4B, the second half.

All four MD years are based in the NT, apart from any elective you arrange elsewhere. Flinders' 2027 application guide says NTMP students cannot change their location from the NT to South Australia. MD Years 1 and 2 are in Darwin, where you find your own accommodation.

Year 3 can be based in Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine or Nhulunbuy, the four NT offerings of the Year 3 topics in the 2027 handbook. Every student is also expected to take a remote placement in Year 3 or 4. Flinders offers short and long ones in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine and Nhulunbuy, and you preference a region in Year 2 to be placed there in Year 3 where possible.

Flinders' pages describe the longest option differently. Its NT entry page (August 2026) offers the chance of a whole year or more in a remote area. Its clinical experiences page (March 2025) says third-years can spend six months or more in a remote location. One 2025 graduate spent six months in Katherine and also had a placement in Nhulunbuy.

Flinders manages furnished shared houses and units for placement students in Alice Springs, Darwin, Katherine, Nhulunbuy and Tennant Creek, with single rooms and a $200 refundable deposit. Using them means attending Flinders' free cultural workshop on working with Aboriginal clients in that region. The AMC reported in 2024 that NTMP students on regional placements are given accommodation, but students found suitable housing in smaller centres hard to get and raised safety concerns.

Before placements, Flinders registers you as a student with the Medical Board of Australia through AHPRA, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, and you must meet immunisation rules. The NT adds an Ochre Card (its working with children clearance), tuberculosis screening, a signed confidentiality deed poll, manual handling training and a police certificate from an Australian police service. Some community placements are confirmed at short notice.

Choice starts in Pathway Year 2 with one specialist elective: Society, Culture and Health; Health Informatics; Rural and Remote Health; or HSC111. The course page calls HSC111 Mental Health and Wellbeing, but the 2027 unit catalogue lists it as Ethics in Health Care.

In MD Year 2 you choose a personal and professional development elective in the medical humanities, either a short course or a community activity. Medicine 2A adds a medical humanities project on the experience of illness. Advanced Studies is the larger choice: a supervised research project or two postgraduate coursework topics. The coursework is taught online, some of it also in person in Adelaide, and includes Remote and Indigenous Primary Health Care.

For the final year, Flinders' 2023–25 model includes one elective and a medical selective. An information session runs in Year 3, and interstate and overseas electives need your topic coordinator's approval. One 2025 NTMP graduate took his elective at St George's Hospital in London.

Research is built into the MD rather than taken as an extra year. Advanced Studies starts with research methods in MD Year 1. A supervised project or coursework runs from July of Year 2 to August of Year 3, and the capstone follows in Year 4. Projects can be based at the university or in NT health services.

Flinders' combined MD-MPH pauses the MD after Year 2 for a year of full-time Master of Public Health study, but NT bonded students cannot apply at present.

Your CDU years are on the Casuarina campus, CDU's largest, on Larrakia country about 15 km from central Darwin, with a library, student accommodation options and a free semester-time bus to CDU Waterfront.

MD teaching is in CDU Yellow Building 4, Flinders' Darwin facility on the same campus. Flinders told the AMC in 2024 that it had recently been refurbished for larger intakes and that further expansion was being planned; the CDU lease runs to 2035. The 2026 timetables name its Clinical Skills Lecture and Ward rooms, small-group rooms and the CDU Anatomy Lab.

Flinders' second Darwin campus, Building 4A at Royal Darwin Hospital, holds the program's administration centre and teaching rooms. The 2026 timetables use them for Year 3 teaching, progress tests and Year 2's long cases. Both Darwin campuses have student common rooms with kitchens and 24-hour swipe access, some free parking and childcare; a locker key at the hospital needs a $20 deposit.

Alice Springs students have lecture rooms and simulated learning spaces open around the clock, and more than 60 bikes to borrow. Katherine has teaching rooms in O'Keefe House at the hospital. In Nhulunbuy, the Clinical Education Training Facility at Gove District Hospital hosts video-conference teaching for Year 3 and 4 students and interdisciplinary simulation days.

Flinders recruits learning coaches in the NT, and they need no medical training. When the AMC visited in October 2024, NTMP students had a psychologist available three days a week, which it commended. Medical mentors met Year 1 and 2 students up to five times a year about their progress. The AMC also found support structures less visible in the NTMP than in Flinders' rural South Australian stream.

Each NT campus has a local student support officer, and EASA, a local provider, offers counselling. On placement, Flinders' NT placement team offers pastoral support and local knowledge. In your CDU years you use CDU's services, including counselling, First Nations tutorial support and a 24-hour wellbeing support line.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have Yungkurrinthi Student Engagement. It offers student spaces in CDU Yellow Building 4 and Building 4A at Royal Darwin Hospital, Indigenous Student Success Officers, free tutoring and its own counsellors. Elders on Campus offer cultural mentoring in Darwin, and Flinders' December 2024 news names an Indigenous Pathways to Medicine program of academic and pastoral help.

Two student groups, the Flinders Medical Students' Society NT and the Students Association for Rural and Remote Health, run events; in 2023 they hosted the Australian Medical Students' Association Rural Summit in Darwin. Flinders' NT Regional Training Hub supports doctors from internship to specialist training. For final-year students in 2025, it gave a talk on rural and remote medical careers, sponsored a networking lunch and hosted a pre-intern meet and greet.