The Flinders Medicine course

Years 1 and 2 use a flipped classroom: you work through online resources and pre-reading before each timetabled session. The core method is team-based learning. Each week you sit a short individual readiness assurance test, then a team version, before a facilitator takes the class through clinical problems. Your team members also formally review your contribution.

Science and Scholarship, one of the four domains, covers block science, anatomy and Advanced Studies. Clinical Practice covers communication and examination skills, Health and Society covers Aboriginal, public and behavioural health, and Professionalism and Leadership covers ethics, law, coaching and personal development.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health is a distinct program in Years 1 and 2, recently renewed under the leadership of an Aboriginal health expert. When the AMC visited in October 2024, it found this teaching was not yet carried through Years 3 and 4 at every site, although NTMP students had substantial Indigenous health teaching and placements. It set Flinders deadlines of 2026 for Years 1 and 2 and 2027 for Years 3 and 4.

From Year 3 you learn through work-integrated learning: as part of clinical teams, with bedside and clinic teaching, structured skills workshops and supervised sessions. In 2024 the AMC found the learning outcomes for Years 3 and 4 too loosely set out. Students, most of all at Bedford Park, said they were left to work out what to learn, and the AMC set a 2025 deadline for clearer outcomes.

Flinders tells international applicants to expect contact hours of roughly 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, plus substantial study at home. In the first half of Year 2, the handbook lists about four hours of lectures, two of practicals and an hour and a half of tutorials each week. Across the half-year it also lists 33 hours of seminars, a 30-hour negotiated program and 200 hours of independent study, while team-based learning and clinical skills sessions run weekly.

SARM describes Years 1 and 2 as mostly lectures, tutorials, workshops, clinical skills and simulation, plus independent study. Its June 2024 FAQ, written before the first intake, pictured a Year 3 week of GP-led consulting sessions at your practice, tutorials or workshops, case discussions and simulation. The same FAQ adds ward rounds and specialist clinic or theatre sessions.

Anatomy runs through Years 1 and 2. In Year 1 it is taught in lab sessions and examined by a viva, an oral exam held in the anatomy lab. The 2027 handbook names dissection in Year 2: your group dissects the abdomen and then the musculoskeletal system, in the same half-year as the gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal blocks.

Each Year 2 dissection is examined by a lab viva, and you complete a workbook linking what you dissected to clinical practice. Your dissection group also formally reviews each member's contribution. The Renmark campus has its own anatomy lab.

A 2022 College news item says students also learn from prosections, bodies already dissected by staff to show particular structures. The item marked the unveiling of a memorial plaque to body donors at Flinders' Anatomy Museum, and says all South Australian body donation runs through the University of Adelaide. From your first day in the lab, it adds, you learn to treat donors with respect, as your first patients.

Your first patients, in Year 1, are simulated: members of the community recruited and trained to play patients. Year 1 also includes hospital observation. You are assessed on a history-taking interview in each half of Year 1, and on examining the heart and chest in a simulated consultation. These assessments are video recorded so a second assessor can moderate the marking.

Year 2 adds visits to general practice and a GP placement, where you keep a placement and procedural skills logbook. The second half of Year 2 includes 120 hours of clinical placement, and a ward placement was brought back in 2023 after COVID-19 had cut Year 2 clinical time.

SARM students in Years 1 and 2 also have community placements in local health facilities, including GP clinics and the local hospital. From Year 3 you are on placement full time, expected to work as an active member of the team, though the AMC found in 2024 that this varies by placement.

Every core topic is graded pass or fail, which Flinders calls a non-graded pass, and most tasks within it are hurdles you must pass. The AMC reported that Years 1 and 2 have seven to nine summative assessments that must be passed. You get one resit, and a second fail means failing the semester. Failing any single 18-unit topic triggers a formal student progress process.

All year groups sit the progress tests at the same time: four a year in Years 1 to 3, and two, both in the first half, in Year 4. They are formative, meaning for feedback only, in Years 1 and 2, and they count in Years 3 and 4. Results are broken down by topic area and compared with your year group and your own earlier scores.

In the clinical years your supervisors submit Global Assessment of Progress (GAP) reports, rating you against six criteria. The handbook asks for three per half-year in Year 3 and the first half of Year 4. You also need at least three mini clinical evaluation exercises on each placement, where a supervisor watches you with a patient and scores the encounter. Handover presentations are marked against a rubric, and students rated doubtful are reviewed at GAP meetings every six weeks.

The Year 3 OSCE is the main clinical exam: you rotate through timed stations, each testing clinical tasks with a patient. It is held at Bedford Park and Darwin, with the same stations at the same time. Each station is judged on three domains, such as history taking, clinical reasoning or management, and the AMC reported a pass mark of 17 of the 24 judgements.

Sources differ on the format. Flinders' report on the November 2023 OSCE gave eight 12-minute stations for 166 students, covering acute care, primary care, child health, women's health, mental health, general medicine and general surgery. The AMC, reporting on its 2024 assessment, describes eight 10-minute stations. Either way, you receive an overall score and written feedback on each domain.

• Year 1 and 2 clinical skills are marked against checklists. The Clinical Skills Consolidation assessment at the end of Year 2 is a 30-minute observation of you taking a history from a simulated patient and doing a targeted examination.
• Your learning coach portfolio is a hurdle every half-year, ending in Year 4 with an executive summary of your progress across the four domains.
• Supervisors score Advanced Studies research on an eight-point scale; capstone work can be a conference presentation or an assignment marked by an expert third-party reviewer.
• Course rules: taking more than six consecutive years to finish can count as not meeting academic requirements, and approved leave, at most four semesters, counts towards that limit. Leaving early can earn a Graduate Diploma in Medical Studies after Year 1 or a Master of Medical Studies after Year 2, depending on your entry route.

Your clinical years depend on your stream, and Flinders makes each applicant one offer, for one location. SARM students cannot transfer to Bedford Park or the NTMP, and NTMP students cannot move to South Australia. Before placements you need immunisations, police and working-with-children checks, and registration as a student with the Medical Board of Australia through AHPRA, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. In 2024 the AMC reported one to eight students per hospital supervisor; in general practice you may have the same GP for up to six weeks.

Bedford Park students take Years 3 and 4 mainly across Adelaide and rural South Australia, though Flinders' student placement page says rotations can also be in the Northern Territory. Flinders names the Southern and Northern Adelaide Local Health Networks as placement partners. Every student has a rural placement. In the 2023-25 model, all SA placements last six weeks, in two runs of three with a two-week break between them.

The MD Rural Stream let Bedford Park students spend all of Year 3 in a rural community, attached to a general practice. It runs until the end of 2027 and is then fully replaced by SARM, so it closes before 2027 entrants reach Year 3. SARM's Year 3 carries on the same model.

SARM students live in Renmark or Mount Gambier for Years 1 and 2 and arrange their own housing, with no relocation help. Flinders' SARM and course pages (September 2026) and the 2027 handbook list four Years 3 and 4 regions: the Riverland, the Greater Green Triangle around Mount Gambier, Hills Mallee Fleurieu and the Barossa Valley. The 2027 application guide instead has you nominate from three groupings: Riverland Mallee Coorong, Limestone Coast and Hamilton, and Barossa Hills and Fleurieu. Either way the College allocates you, and preferences are not guaranteed.

NTMP students find their own accommodation in Darwin. Each is expected to take a remote placement in Year 3 or 4 in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine or Nhulunbuy, lasting from a short block to a year or more. You preference a region in Year 2 and, where possible, are placed there in Year 3. In 2024 the AMC warned that growing numbers, and Charles Darwin University's separate medical program, will mean more competition for NT placements, and required Flinders to plan them with CDU.

If SARM moves you to a different region for Years 3 and 4, you get a relocation reimbursement. Eligible students also get subsidised housing, internet, mileage and travel to rotations at other sites, and Flinders strongly recommends a car. Flinders manages furnished shared houses for placement students in rural SA and five NT towns, with single rooms and a $200 refundable deposit; NT students using them must attend a cultural workshop.

The first elective comes in Year 2: the personal and professional development elective, set in the medical humanities. It can be a formal short course or a community activity that meets the learning goals, and it is assessed according to what you choose. Medicine 2A also includes a medical humanities project on the experience of illness.

Your Advanced Studies route is the other big choice. Coursework students take two postgraduate topics, one in Year 2 and one in Year 3. The lists include palliative care, remote and Indigenous primary health care, climate change and disasters, global health, and clinical teaching.

Flinders' pages differ on final-year electives. The Bachelor of Clinical Sciences/Doctor of Medicine page, updated in October 2026, says you may be able to take 12 weeks of clinical electives anywhere in the world in your final year. The 2023-25 placement model has one six-week elective, plus a medical selective, in Year 4. The MD course page lists study abroad as not available.

In 2024 the AMC found elective options still recovering from COVID-19. Flinders' international page says electives and placements can be almost anywhere, naming countries such as India, Nepal, Thailand, Germany, Canada, the US and the UK. Within Australia, Flinders NT offers elective placements to approved medical students in their penultimate or final year, at sites including Royal Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Gove District hospitals.

Beyond Advanced Studies, two combined degrees pause the MD after Year 2 and return you to it afterwards. Before rejoining you complete Clinical Practice Preparedness, a 4.5-unit refresher topic that eases you back into clinical work; it can also be required after other leave of six months or more.

The MD-MPH adds a one-year, full-time Master of Public Health, making five years in all, and is offered at Bedford Park. You take the coursework route through Advanced Studies, choosing public health topics that count towards the MPH. The MPH year can be studied online and covers epidemiology, biostatistics, social determinants of health, health promotion, First Nations health and a practicum. You join by internal transfer once enrolled, and NT bonded students are currently ineligible.

The MD-PhD inserts a three-year PhD after Year 2, so it takes seven years. You choose the research route through Advanced Studies in Year 1, discuss a PhD with the MD course coordinator midway through Year 2, and need a bachelor's degree with honours. Work counted towards the MD capstone cannot also count towards the PhD. The program is currently not open to international students.

At Bedford Park the AMC describes teaching rooms, laboratories, anatomy facilities, simulation labs, a library and study spaces, all shared with the rest of the College. There is also a Clinical Skills and Simulation Unit. In 2024 the AMC noted that the only route between the medical centre and the main campus was by stairs, and asked Flinders to improve access for students with disability.

Rural SA students use Flinders Rural and Remote Health campuses in Renmark, Mount Gambier, Nuriootpa, Murray Bridge and Victor Harbor, with computer labs, video-conference teaching rooms and student support. The Renmark campus, next to Renmark and Paringa District Hospital, has a simulation centre and lecture rooms, and the Berri Simulation Suite sits beside Riverland General Hospital.

NTMP students start in a Flinders building on Charles Darwin University's Casuarina campus, which the AMC reported in 2024 had been refurbished for bigger intakes. Flinders has a second Darwin campus at Royal Darwin Hospital. At Gove District Hospital in Nhulunbuy, a Clinical Education Training Facility hosts video-conference teaching for Year 3 and 4 students and interdisciplinary simulation days. Alice Springs and Katherine have Flinders teaching space on the hospital grounds.

At Bedford Park, both domestic and international MD students can apply for on-campus housing through Flinders Living; only international MD students are guaranteed a place, and conditions apply.

Alongside your learning coach, topic coordinators support you through each half-year topic, arrange reasonable adjustments and link you to the university's health, counselling and disability services. Students struggling in Years 3 and 4 are offered strategic study coaching. The College has its own Disability Academic Advisor.

Year 1 starts with a preparation week, which you must attend in person, covering cultural awareness and safety, mental health support and introductions to staff. After its 2024 visit, the AMC set Flinders a 2026 deadline to improve wellbeing support. Students had reported long waits for university counselling, a six-session limit and appointments only in working hours, which are hard to reach from placement.

Support also differs by site. At the AMC's 2024 visit, NT students had a psychologist available three days a week, and medical mentors who met Year 1 and 2 students up to five times a year. SARM students have rural campus support staff and on-site rural counsellors. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students can turn to Yungkurrinthi Student Engagement and to the Elders on Campus in Darwin and the Riverland.

Outside class, the Flinders University Rural Health Society runs social and rural health events. Its members can apply for the Ride Along Program, a one-day observational attachment with the Royal Flying Doctor Service.