The Curtin Medicine course

Curtin calls the curriculum integrated: science and clinical skills are taught together. In Year 1, patient cases set the scene for learning how each body system works, while the same unit teaches you to take a history and examine a healthy person. Four curriculum domains run through all five years. Clinical Practitioner covers clinical, procedural and communication skills, and Professional and Leader covers ethics, law, teamwork and your own wellbeing. Health Advocate covers health systems and the social and environmental causes of illness, and Scientist and Scholar the sciences behind medicine and evidence-based practice.

Years 1 to 3 use a problem-based learning (PBL) approach. Your group meets a patient case, works out what it needs to learn, and members research the topics before meeting again to pull them together. In 2018 the AMC reported practice questions, tutor and peer feedback and wrap-up sessions supporting the cases, and an emphasis on becoming more independent and self-directed each year.

PBL tutorials fill about a fifth of the timetabled hours in each of Years 1 to 3, and the rest of the mix changes. Year 1 has 150 hours of clinical lectures; the Year 2 and 3 timetables list none, and their largest block is clinical intensive workshops, 377 and 322 hours. The second half of Year 3 is set aside for extension work and spaced revision, returning to earlier topics at intervals so they stick, before placements begin.

From Year 4 you learn mainly on placement. In Medicine 4 and Medicine 5 you return to campus for set teaching, which the handbook calls Back to campus (160 and 228 hours a year). Medicine 4 Rural instead lists 160 hours of learning sessions, seminars, workshops and tutorials during the rural year. In 2018 the AMC described back-to-campus weeks as a way to cover topics that not every placement site teaches, with sessions on spotting the gaps in your own knowledge.

Anatomy is taught within each year's single unit rather than as a separate subject. Year 1 covers how the body's structure relates to its function in health, and Year 3 studies normal anatomy and physiology alongside disease. Laboratory classes run in each of Years 1 to 3, and Year 2's timetable lists time in the anatomy laboratory.

The Faculty of Health Sciences, which includes the Medical School, gives its students access to an anatomy suite. It has preserved human and bone specimens, anatomical models and six teaching laboratories holding more than 200 students at a time, plus a museum of preserved human dissections and diseased tissue. In 2018 the AMC also listed a Sectra table, an interactive screen for exploring anatomy images, among the course's learning resources.

Curtin's 2027 admissions guide says every Medical School unit includes compulsory fieldwork and clinical placements, and that Year 1 takes you into the community through structured activities. The course page lists hospitals, primary care and aged care among the settings you study, and the first three years include occasional visits to clinical sites. Fieldwork time grows each year.

First you must meet the mandatory requirements. These include a National Police Certificate, a first aid certificate, Mental Health First Aid training (organised by the school in Semester 1), online hand hygiene training, health screening, immunisations and signed declarations. Some are due by the third week of Semester 1, and a Working with Children Check is needed from Year 2.

You pay the costs of these, including vaccinations and screening. WA Health also requires a national criminal history check before you work at its sites. The Faculty of Health Sciences registers you with Ahpra as a medical student for the whole course, at no cost.

Clinical skills start in a safe setting. In Year 1 you learn about the doctor–patient relationship, communication and history taking, and practise basic examination and procedures within a consultation with a healthy person, including your classmates. Year 2 moves to simulated patient encounters, practice consultations set up to mimic real ones.

Rural contact starts early too. Curtin said in 2021 that all second-years spend a week in the Wheatbelt, living with a local family. In March 2025 the Wheatbelt Rural Immersion Program took more than 200 Curtin and Notre Dame students to 14 towns for three days. They visited general practice clinics, aged care centres, hospitals and emergency services and stayed with host families. Rural Health West, which promotes rural health careers in WA, coordinates it with the universities and Wheatbelt local governments.

In 2022 Curtin also told the AMC that early-year students could join immersion programs in Kalgoorlie and the Goldfields. Then, in Year 4, you take part in patient care under supervision for the whole year.

Each year is one 200-credit unit, and you must pass it before starting the next. If you fail and are allowed to repeat, you repeat the whole year, with no credit for tasks you passed the first time.

Moving up a year depends on your professional behaviour as well as your results. Poor behaviour can hold you back even with good marks, and enrolment can be ended if it is unsatisfactory. Curtin expects you to meet the standards of a medical student at first, rising towards those of a doctor as you go.

In its 2018 report the AMC described written exams using single best answer (SBA) questions, where you pick the one best option from a list. It also listed assessment of your work in PBL, an ePortfolio of reflective assignments and Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs). An OSCE is a practical exam in which you rotate through timed stations, each testing a skill such as examining a patient.

For the clinical years the same report noted planned workplace-based assessments, where a supervisor watches and rates you with real patients. They included directly observed procedural skills (DOPS), mini clinical evaluation exercises (mini-CEX) and professionalism mini-evaluations (P-MEX). When Year 2 first ran in 2018, the AMC recorded monthly practice quizzes, a mid-year practice test, and an end-of-year written exam and OSCE.

The AMC's 2022 report adds that a Board of Examiners makes final progression decisions. Year 5 has written exams and OSCEs, which the school asked three outside experts to review. In a 2021 pilot, Years 4 and 5 sat the Prescribing Skills Assessment, a test of safe prescribing, for practice. The school also takes part in the Australasian Collaboration for Clinical Assessment in Medicine (ACCLAiM), through which medical schools in Australia and New Zealand compare OSCE results.

Rural Clinical School students are taught and assessed to the same standards as city-based students, RCSWA says. Those who stay rural for final year complete their university's curriculum and assessment requirements at their site, apart from the end-of-year exams.

• Leave during Semester 2 of Year 2 or Year 3, after satisfactory progress in that year's Semester 1 formative (practice) assessments, and you are credited with 100 credit points.
• Leave at any point in Year 4 or Year 5 and you are eligible for a Bachelor of Science (Health Studies), an exit-only award that cannot be used to return to the MBBS.

For Years 1 to 3 you are based at Curtin Perth in Bentley. Year 4 is the move into clinical settings, and Curtin says it offers a variety of placements in outer-metropolitan, rural and regional locations, in both community and hospital settings. In Year 5 you train in a range of environments as part of the healthcare team. The course also uses general practices across the state.

Curtin's 2027 domestic admissions guide names 12 placement sites across Perth and Mandurah, listed below. Curtin Midland opened beside St John of God Midland Public Hospital in November 2019, and in 2021 Curtin said some medical students are based there for Years 4 and 5. Year 4 can also take you further: Curtin described a 2021 graduate whose Year 4 at Royal Perth Hospital included a week in Broome and five weeks each in Margaret River and Laverton.

A quarter of each Year 4 class can spend the year with RCSWA, a partnership of UWA, Notre Dame and Curtin that Curtin students joined in 2019. You apply in Year 3: after an information session you submit your details and preferred towns, then have an interview with a staff panel and hear the outcome within four weeks.

You can say which matters more to you, your first-choice town or being placed with one or two classmates. Offers name the other students at your site, and sites cannot be negotiated. Single students live free in furnished RCSWA houses with internet. Students bringing a partner or family find their own housing and can claim a bursary: $6,000 plus $1,000 from Geraldton south, or $7,000 plus $1,000 from Karratha north. RCSWA pays your trip out at the start of the year and home at the end.

You live in your town for the 12 months, and its medical coordinators, experienced local doctors, work with you on your learning goals. You may work in the local hospital, general practices, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (health services run by local Aboriginal communities), the Royal Flying Doctor Service and population health units. In 2026, RCSWA had 117 penultimate-year and 21 final-year students across WA.

After a Rural Clinical School Year 4 you can apply to stay for Year 5 in Broome, Geraldton, Bunbury or Albany. RCSWA's own page says Curtin students are eligible, though a WA Health page last updated in July 2024 names only UWA and Notre Dame. The program is competitive and self-funded: RCSWA covers travel and relocation, but you pay living costs and rent. Metropolitan final-year students are offered a rural general practice placement organised by RCSWA.

Intercalating means pausing your medical degree for a year to complete a separate degree, usually in research, before returning. At Curtin it is optional: the Bachelor of Medical Sciences (Honours), BMedSc(Hons), is a one-year, full-time research degree that its course page and handbook place between Years 3 and 4. The MBBS course page also mentions applying after Year 4.

To be eligible you must have passed Years 1 to 3, with a course weighted average (your credit-weighted mean mark) of at least 65 in Years 2 and 3. You also need an academic who has agreed in principle to supervise you, and approval from the Head of School and the MBBS course coordinator for leave from the MBBS. Entry depends on a suitable supervisor and project, chosen from an advertised list.

The year is one 200-credit unit, Advanced Biomedical Science Honours (MEDI4011). You carry out original biomedical or clinical research with your supervisor, about 36.5 hours a week plus a weekly one-hour journal club, and are assessed on oral and written presentations. The handbook stresses research skills such as epidemiology, population studies and clinical data analysis, which also apply in general practice and rural settings.

Honours is an Australian Qualifications Framework level 8 award that makes you eligible to go on to a PhD, and Curtin presents it as a step towards a clinician-scientist career after internship. When Curtin described the plan to the AMC in 2022, it expected to open Honours to up to 10% of students at the end of Year 3.

The Medical School has its own purpose-built building on the Bentley campus, close to the Faculty of Health Sciences' other schools. When the AMC assessed the course in 2016, the nearly finished building had five storeys, 6,250 square metres of floor space, open learning areas on every floor and 24 clinic rooms suitable for OSCEs. In 2018 the AMC commended its facilities and the video equipment used to give students feedback.

Curtin Midland is a three-storey building on Centennial Place in Midland, part of the state government's plan to turn Midland's historic Workshops Precinct into a medical and education hub. It has contemporary teaching spaces and simulation rooms, where you practise clinical scenarios in a realistic setting, and is used mainly by medicine and allied health students on placement at nearby health services.

The Kalgoorlie Rural Health Campus was built between December 2020 and mid-2021 with $1.3 million from the Commonwealth's Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training program, and opened in August 2021. It has a simulation lab, four OSCE rooms, two classrooms shared with School of Mines and other health students, and audio-visual links for remote teaching. Curtin's campus page adds a simulated hospital ward and clinical training rooms.

The Medicine leadership team includes a Director of Student Experience and Admissions and a Director of Aboriginal Health, and the MBBS has its own course coordinator. Curtin's inherent requirements set out abilities every student must show, such as hearing well enough to use a stethoscope and the stamina for long clinical tasks, with reasonable adjustments where possible. If you have a disability, Curtin invites you to ask the course coordinator for a confidential talk early.

The AMC's 2022 report records a medically trained Wellbeing Mentor, a part-time role filled in December 2021, who sees students struggling to meet course requirements and recommends support or referrals. It also describes StudyWell, a pilot offering triage and support pathways, used in Year 2 and planned for Year 1, and a planned MBBS wellbeing framework. Students sit on the school's governance and advisory groups.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have the Medical School's Aboriginal Health Team. Students entering through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pathway attend a three-day pre-orientation program in February, Ngullar Moorditj Koorliny Keny. It covers how the course is taught and the support available, and family members can meet the team. The Faculty's Indigenous Engagement team adds help with the move to university, academic support and the Koorda Network of staff allies.

On placement, every metropolitan hospital, Midland included, has an Indigenous Liaison Unit whose liaison officer can support students, the AMC noted in 2022. Medical students get priority in Curtin's on-campus housing. The student-run Curtin Rural Outreach Health Club (CROHC) is one of WA's rural health clubs, which WA Health says offer rural experience weekends, career information sessions and professional development. In 2022 the AMC reported that the school was planning visits to secondary schools, to recruit more rural students, together with CROHC.