The Notre Dame Fremantle Medicine course

PBL drives Years 1 and 2. Each case opens with a patient's story. Your group picks out the important clues, suggests explanations and agrees what it needs to learn. You then spend the week finding out through lectures, laboratory classes, clinical skills sessions and your own study. The school's method adapts a seven-step approach developed at Maastricht University.

The school calls its model hybrid PBL: lectures and laboratory classes run alongside the group work and feed into it. Six domains run through all four years: basic and clinical sciences, communication and clinical practice, First Nations health and culture, public health, personal and professional development, and medical research and innovation. The domains design each case together, so the science, the patient's story and the ethical or public health questions arrive at the same time.

Notre Dame is a Catholic university, and every student takes part in its core curriculum in philosophy and theology. In the MD it takes the form of bioethics, the study of ethical questions in medicine and health care. The AMC's 2022 report said students in the foundation years spent time with nursing and physiotherapy students, learning about each profession's role and how they communicate.

Notre Dame's published first-year timetable, a generic week for 2026 written for the previous Year 1 course and subject to change, shows how the PBL cycle shapes the week. Monday opens at 8.30 am with the last tutorial on the previous case. The first tutorial on a new case follows from 9.30 to 11.30, then a public health lecture and an afternoon of science lectures.

Tuesday has science lectures in the morning and, from noon to 6 pm, one long block for science laboratory classes. Wednesday is for clinical practice, with lectures in the morning and clinical skills from 1 to 5 pm. Thursday brings the second PBL tutorial, a personal and professional development session and an afternoon slot for evidence-based medicine tutorials. Friday mornings are kept for one-off bioethics or Aboriginal health days, and nothing is timetabled on Friday afternoons.

In the 2025 PBL manual, Year 2 keeps the same three-tutorial pattern at different times: Monday afternoons from 1.30 to 4.30 pm and Thursdays from 3 to 5 pm. In Years 3 and 4 your week follows your rotation, plus a weekly Back-to-Base day.

In 2027 the course starts with orientation on 18 January, and you must attend in person. Semester 1 runs to a study week and mid-year exams at the end of June, followed by two weeks' break. Semester 2 starts on 19 July and ends with a study week and end-of-year exams from 25 October. Non-teaching weeks fall at Easter and in late September. The new Year 3 course starts in the week of 11 January, and final-year students on the previous course start in the week of 25 January.

Anatomy belongs to the basic and clinical sciences domain and is tied to each week's case, alongside physiology, pathology and pharmacology. The November 2025 campus map shows an anatomy laboratory and clinical training laboratories in ND35, the School of Medicine building at 38 Henry Street. Before you start, you complete an Anatomy Act form; the Anatomy Act is the Western Australian law that regulates anatomical study of human bodies.

Where the sciences are taught has changed over time. In 2016 the AMC reported that Murdoch University taught parts of the basic and clinical sciences, with Year 1 and 2 students based there for those classes. Its 2022 report noted the Murdoch contract had been extended, and its 2023 report on Notre Dame's Sydney program says Fremantle had since brought that teaching in-house.

Your first patients are simulated. Year 1 includes a core communication skills block that takes you from patient-centred interviewing to organised history-taking and physical examination, practised on a range of simulated cases.

Real settings come early as well. Site visits support the Year 1 cases, and in Year 2 the weekly cases are linked to placements in hospitals, general practices and community settings, which the school calls work-integrated learning.

Year 3 is the first full-time clinical year, when you join clinical teams and apply what you know to real patients under supervision. The AMC described the program in 2022 as building clinical skills in stages, with early patient contact.

Detailed assessment information for enrolled students is posted on Blackboard, the online learning system. What follows comes from the calendars and from the AMC's accreditation reports, each dated.

In the 2027 calendars, the new Year 3 course sits its end-of-year exams in mid-November, before its four-week elective rotation. Year 2 and final-year students, still on the previous courses, sit theirs in early November and early October. On the previous courses in 2026, end-of-rotation assessments in Years 3 and 4 fell due at 11.59 pm on set Mondays. You need your own laptop, with at least four hours of battery life, to sit exams.

The AMC's 2022 report said a 2021 assessment policy set the university's grading scale, from fail to high distinction, with 50% as the pass mark, and required continuous assessment to be submitted online. Written exams, practice and real, had been sat on computer using ExamSoft since 2020. Pass marks for computer-based exams in the early years had been set with the Cohen method since 2020, and the clinical years were due to follow from 2022. The Cohen method bases the pass mark on the scores of the top-performing students.

The same report said that from 2021 clinical-year marks were given for specialty blocks rather than single disciplines, with more continuous assessment. Students presented patients as at a hospital meeting or ward round, or wrote a discharge summary, and supervisors observed their histories, examinations and procedures such as inserting an IV cannula. The school planned milestone assessments for each block, to rely less on end-of-year exams.

OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations) test clinical skills: you move round a circuit of timed stations, each testing one task, such as examining a patient. When the AMC visited in 2016, end-of-year OSCEs tracked clinical skills in the early years. In the clinical years supervisors marked mini-CEXs, short observed patient encounters, and a logbook recorded the patients students saw. The school then offered no supplementary exams, or resits, in Years 1 to 3. The AMC's 2022 report said OSCEs had continued through the pandemic.

• In 2026, completing the Wheatbelt stay was required to pass Year 1, and your reflection on it counted for 1% of the year's mark.
• Professional behaviour counts too: you sign a declaration of professionalism every year and must tell the school of any criminal conviction or health issue that could affect your placements.
• If you repeat a course, you may be excused a continuous assessment task you passed in the previous two years, but only in exceptional circumstances.
• In the 2026 calendar for the previous final-year course, the four weeks after exams were labelled elective or remediation.

Apart from the community trips, Years 1 and 2 are based on the Fremantle campus. In Years 3 and 4 your placements are in public and private hospitals, aged care facilities, general practices and community-based services around Perth. The school's staff page names hospital coordinators at the eight hospitals listed below. In 2022 the AMC listed new placement agreements with St John of God Midland and Perth Children's Hospital.

The Year 1 Wheatbelt trip runs in Community Engagement Week in March: 10 to 13 March in 2026 and the week of 15 March in 2027. Notre Dame runs it with Rural Health West, the Wheatbelt Eastern Regional Organisation of Councils and local shires. In 2026 students prepared with a population study of the Wheatbelt in their first week. That year, exemptions from the nights away were given only for medical reasons or family commitments such as being a sole carer, not work, and exempt students did a virtual placement.

On the previous Year 2 course, MEDI6200, the 2026 and 2027 calendars set aside a rural and remote week in late July. The costs register says flights, accommodation and a stipend are provided for the northern options. Broome Learning on Country began in 2017 as a pilot for two PBL groups, 18 students, who spent six weeks in Broome at the start of second semester. By 2022, the AMC reported, 36 students were taking part.

The Rural Clinical School of Western Australia has taken Notre Dame students since 2007. You apply in Year 2: you attend an information session, list your preferred towns and are interviewed by a staff panel. You can say whether your first-choice town or being placed with one or two colleagues matters more, and sites are not negotiable once offered. The AMC put the share of Year 3 taking this route at about a quarter in 2022.

The rural year lasts 38 weeks, and you live in your town throughout. Medical coordinators, who are local doctors, lead the teaching, and you may work in the hospital, general practices, Aboriginal community controlled health services, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and population health units. Single students are housed free, students with partners can claim a bursary, and RCSWA pays your trip out from Perth and back. In 2026, 117 students across the three universities were in their RCSWA penultimate year.

After a rural Year 3 you can apply for RCSWA's Final Year Program in Broome, Geraldton, Bunbury or Albany, where you complete everything except the end-of-year exams on site. It is competitive and self-funded: RCSWA covers travel and relocation, but you pay your own living costs and rent. In 2026 it had 21 students.

• Before your first placement you upload proof of immunisations, a first aid certificate, a WA Working with Children Card and a national police check. You also complete hand hygiene and infection control modules each year.
• Before Year 3 you also need a WA Department of Health Criminal Record Screening Card, which can take four to six weeks to arrive, and mask fit testing, repeated every two years.

Every course in the MD is compulsory: the program rules list no elective courses. Choice comes through the elective rotation, your capstone topic and the rural options.

The new final-year course, MEDI6444, includes an elective clinical rotation in an area that interests you. The 2027 calendar for the new Year 3 course also ends with a four-week elective rotation after the exams, from 22 November to mid-December. Under the previous courses, Notre Dame's register of other course costs describes one four-week elective, taken in Year 3 or Year 4, which can be urban, rural, remote, interstate or international. In the 2027 calendar for final-year students still on that course, it runs from 18 October.

For a country elective, the Rural Clinical School arranges rural clinical electives across WA at set times of year. In 2022 the AMC reported that the school had added more chances to learn in and from Aboriginal settings through electives.

The School of Medicine works from four buildings on Henry Street in Fremantle's historic West End, a short walk from Fremantle train and bus station. They hold a 200-seat lecture theatre, simulated clinic rooms, a simulated hospital ward, clinical and procedural skills facilities and small PBL tutorial rooms, all with networked audio-visual equipment.

ND35 at 38 Henry Street, the school's address, also holds classrooms, a lecture theatre and the Galvin Study Centre. The AMC reported in 2022 that PBL rooms had been fitted with microphones and cameras and the school's Galvin library upgraded for online learning.

Port Lodge, the university's on-campus residence in Fremantle, has 25 beds; other options include shared student apartments and private rentals. The school advises sorting out accommodation and transport well before the year starts, as there is no time once it begins.

Mentors are assigned to you from the start of the course through to your final clinical rotation. In Years 1 and 2 your PBL tutor is also your first point of contact for academic or personal problems.

Student Success offers courses and programs to build study skills and confidence, and support for students with particular educational needs. If your first degree was not in science, the school recommends reading the first two chapters of one of four standard anatomy and physiology textbooks before you start. In Year 1 you also complete Mental Health First Aid e-learning.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are supported by the Indigenous Health and Medicine Team and the Manjaree Student Space. The team runs a one-week preparation program each December for commencing Indigenous students. In 2022 the AMC reported support including dedicated tutors, scholarships, help with accommodation and emergency financial assistance.

MSAND, the Medical Student Association of Notre Dame, was formed in 2005 by the school's first cohort, and each year students elect a representative to the Australian Medical Students' Association. The program publishes inherent requirements, the abilities you need in eight areas from ethical behaviour to sustained performance, and the Access and Inclusion team can discuss reasonable adjustments in confidence.