The Macquarie Medicine course

The MD is an integrated course. Disciplines are combined within each unit rather than taught one at a time, and core concepts come back in more depth as you progress. In Years 1 and 2 teaching is organised around body systems and real contexts of practice, with a weekly case giving each week its focus. Patient safety and quality run through the whole course, a strand Macquarie built with its Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI), which researches how to improve health services.

In the 2026 units, much of the Year 1 content comes before class. Lectures are pre-recorded and sit alongside the Connected Curriculum for Health Professionals, an online library of curated resources with practice quizzes that give automatic feedback. Class time is then spent applying that content in small groups, labs and clinical skills sessions. Two Year 1 units are taken with Doctor of Physiotherapy students, covering the social side of health, Indigenous health, evidence-based practice and professionalism.

Year 2 shifts towards patients. Each unit follows a weekly theme shared across the session, combining lectures or seminars with case-based tutorials, bedside teaching, procedural skills sessions, clinical and cultural workshops and time on placement. Research methods and patient safety come at the end of the year, to prepare you for your project.

Years 3 and 4 are work-integrated placements: you are attached to a healthcare team and learn by taking part in the care of its patients. The AMC's 2024 report found students on these placements were treated as team members. Teaching sessions continue around placements, and you are expected to direct more of your own learning, using your portfolio to find the gaps.

Macquarie's handbook gives an average study load of about 35 hours a week. How those hours are spent changes a great deal from year to year, and across the four years you complete about 84 weeks of clinical training.

Going by the 2026 unit guides, your in-person week in Year 1 mixes clinical colloquia, lab practicals and a clinical masterclass. It also has clinical and core skills tutorials, simulation and tutorials for the two units shared with physiotherapy students. Around these you work through pre-recorded lectures, set reading and online modules, and visit your community placement.

In Year 2, clinical experience takes about a day and a half a week over 36 weeks. The rest of the week is case-based and expert-led tutorials, workshops and a weekly lecture series that runs through the whole year. In Year 3 you are on placement about four days a week, and in Year 4 about five.

Anatomy is part of Year 1's applied medical science teaching rather than a separate subject. In the 2026 handbook it is taught through interactive practical sessions, including sessions in a wet anatomy laboratory, alongside physiology, biochemistry, cell biology, pathology, microbiology, immunology and pharmacology.

You are examined in a one-to-one anatomy and pathology viva, an oral exam held in the wet lab. It uses prosected specimens (real human specimens already dissected by trained staff), pathology pots (preserved diseased tissue in sealed jars) and still images. You identify structures and answer clinical questions linking structure, function, drugs and disease. In 2026 each of the two Year 1 science units had one, worth 30% of the unit.

Anatomy carries on into Year 2 through anatomy and pathology practical workshops in the year-long Reflective Medical Practice 1 unit. The online Connected Curriculum also links to virtual anatomy resources. Macquarie expects you to arrive with assumed knowledge of human anatomy and physiology, although these are no longer admission prerequisites.

Your first clinical contact is in controlled settings. In Year 1 you practise history taking and examination on classmates, simulated patients and manikins. Simulated patients come from the MQ Health Volunteer program, and the Health and Wellbeing Collaboration (HAWC), an interprofessional program, also brings community members into teaching.

Real patients appear in Year 1 too, in clinical masterclasses and through HAWC. The two units shared with physiotherapy students include a community clinical placement, where you observe and monitor a volunteer from the community. You keep a logbook of this work, and completing it is a condition of passing.

Year 2 brings regular clinical experience, organised around MQ Health's clinical programs and other primary care providers. You take histories from and examine real patients with common conditions, and practise basic procedures. In each of the three main Year 2 units you write up one patient you assessed in full as a clinical case report, then discuss it in a viva.

From Year 3 you are part of the team: you take histories, examine patients, present them and perform procedures under supervision. The AMC's 2024 report found procedural skills were taught and practised with less confidence at Apollo, because Indian medical students generally perform fewer and less complex procedures.

Assessment is built around four graduate capabilities: Scientist and Scholar, Clinical Practitioner, Engaged Global Citizen and Professional. Each has two aspects, making eight capability aspects, and every task is mapped to one or more of them. Results go into the Macquarie Assessment Portfolio, a running record you review and reflect on with a mentor.

Alongside the capabilities are Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs): core clinical tasks where an assessor judges how much supervision you would need to do them. There are five EPAs in Stage 1 and nine Graduate EPAs in Stage 2. Each stage ends with a portfolio examination that reviews your whole record, your reflections and your EPA supervision levels.

Written exams use multiple choice and short answer questions, with extended matching questions in the end-of-Stage 1 exam. Clinical skills are tested in OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations), where you rotate through timed stations that each test one task. Year 2 ends with an OSCE covering all of Stage 1, and it is a hurdle: you must pass it whatever your other marks. Anyone who misses a hurdle standard gets remediation and another attempt.

Two kinds of observed assessment start in Year 1. In a Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX) an assessor watches you with a patient, and in Direct Observation of Procedural Skills (DOPS) they watch you perform a procedure. Both are for feedback only in Years 1 and 2. From Year 3 a Team Clinical Evaluation Exercise (T-MEX) is added, where an assessor judges how you work in a team, and in Year 3 you must pass at least five of each.

Year 3's main exams are a multi-station clinical viva and a multi-station Clinical Performance Examination, and both are hurdles. A practice written exam covers the core disciplines plus ethics, public health, patient safety and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. Supervisors complete an In-Training Assessment at the end of each rotation, and each placement unit sets two clinical discipline or ethics projects.

Year 4 ends with a hurdle written exam covering all Stage 2 disciplines except mental health and critical and acute care, which have their own rotation assessments with clinical and written parts. The final hurdle is a portfolio examination and interview, which grades all eight capability aspects and sets your supervision level for each of the nine Graduate EPAs.

• Year 1 science units (2026): a mid-session written exam, end-of-session written papers and the one-to-one anatomy and pathology viva.
• Year 1 clinical practice units (2026): end-of-session written papers and an OSCE, each worth half the unit.
• Year 1 shared units: a logbook you must complete, a video explaining a treatment as a clinician would, a reflective report and a clinical handover report. There are also group case and ethics presentations and a patient decision aid.
• Each 10-week Year 2 unit: a written exam (40%), a clinical case report on a patient you assessed (20%) and a viva on that case (40%).
• Year 4 capability tasks can include a prescribing assessment and a viva focused on patient management.

Stage 1 is spent on the North Ryde campus and at MQ Health, with Year 2 clinical sessions there and in general practices. In Stage 2 you are placed at MQ Health, Royal North Shore Hospital and other Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD) services, Northern Beaches Hospital, the MindSpot Clinic and Sydney general practices. Macquarie's clinical schools are the hospital-based teaching campuses you are attached to, such as the Northern Beaches Clinical School. Clinical school officers organise students on site there, at MQ Health and at Royal North Shore.

The India trimester is at the Apollo Clinical School, based at the private Apollo Hospital in Hyderabad. To go, you must be eligible for an Indian visa and have the vaccinations and clearances Macquarie's partners require. Macquarie plans the accommodation and other logistics with its Regional Director for South Asia. The AMC's 2024 team found students rated the accommodation highly and valued the student-led system for allocating rooms.

A faculty member travels to India with the students, and there is a pre-departure program and health assessment before you leave. Macquarie also has a repatriation plan, which it used in early 2020 when COVID-19 struck. Apollo Hospital had a new student learning hub in 2024. Students have access to simulation facilities there, but some reported difficulty using them outside scheduled sessions.

Placements with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients run mainly through two sites. At Kildare Road Medical Centre in Blacktown, Year 3 students spend about three days. One is with a GP, one with an allied health professional and one with the Western Sydney University Integrated Team Care program. At the Bungee Bidgel Clinic in Hornsby, run by NSLHD, Year 2 students are placed with GPs and Year 4 students can attend a paediatric clinic. The AMC called these placements short and asked Macquarie to expand them.

Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand, which represents the medical schools, published a 2024 case study of Macquarie's Primary Care Intensive. It describes six students spending 12 weeks across general practice, a women's health clinic, a private skin cancer clinic and palliative care, on top of the compulsory general practice placements. Places were filled by expression of interest, with 16 applications for six places, and the group met weekly for teaching with two GP mentors.

The hospitals named for core placements are all in Sydney or Hyderabad. The AMC's 2024 report encouraged Macquarie to find more learning in regional and rural settings, noting that students can choose electives Macquarie arranges or source their own.

Year 4 is where choice comes in. Besides the core blocks in critical and acute care and in mental health, the year is made up of selectives and an elective. You submit preferences for these based on your interests and learning needs.

The elective lasts eight weeks. In 2024 the AMC reported that you can choose from options Macquarie arranges or source your own, and that selectives were offered with several international clinical partners. The handbook also allows for selectives and electives away from Macquarie's usual sites.

If you take the GP Intensive Stream instead of the India trimester, you can still request an elective in India in Year 4. For each selective or elective you write a reflective report of about 500 words, and your supervisor completes an In-Training Assessment. Together these make up a quarter of the unit mark.

The Clinical Simulation Lab, shared with the Doctor of Physiotherapy, holds a mock operating theatre and a two-bed hospital ward in one space, each controlled separately. Its manikins range from newborn and baby to child and adult, including three Laerdal SimMan Essentials, plus resuscitation manikins, ultrasound training models and emergency equipment. Two lower-fidelity rooms sit outside the main lab.

Part-task trainers let you practise single procedures such as inserting a urinary catheter, taking blood and placing a cannula, as well as rectal, gynaecological and abdominal examination. Wall-mounted patient monitors, large touchscreens and a recording and streaming system support teaching and debriefs.

Anatomy is taught in a wet anatomy laboratory on campus. Macquarie University Health's hospital and 30 specialist clinics are the main clinical teaching base. You also have access to three robotic surgical systems and a Gamma Knife, a machine that treats brain conditions with focused radiation.

Away from campus, Macquarie has developed the Northern Beaches Clinical School at Northern Beaches Hospital and a student learning hub at Apollo Hospital. Course materials sit on iLearn, the university's learning system, and in the Connected Curriculum online library.

Mentoring is built into the course. Your reflective units include academic mentoring, and in Stage 2 you meet a portfolio mentor who helps you read your assessment record and plan what to work on. The AMC's 2024 report found students and staff especially valued the Stage 2 mentor as an ongoing contact across rotations. Student leaders also told the AMC they valued the chance to mentor and assess junior students.

During the AMC's 2024 visit Macquarie appointed an MD Student Counsellor, a half-time psychologist role filled through the School of Psychological Sciences so that it sits apart from the MD course. The appointment followed discussions about student support between the faculty and student leaders in the Macquarie Uni Medicine Society (MUMS). Year 3 students are offered mental health first aid training, and education support, work-integrated learning and clinical school officer teams help with placements and wellbeing.