The Notre Dame Sydney Medicine course

Problem-based learning (PBL) is the backbone of Years 1 and 2. Each week a real-life clinical case sets the context for what you learn. Your small group explores the case with a clinician tutor, and tutorials, lectures, practicals, workshops, site visits and your own study fill in the content. In the school's 2026 Year 1 timetable, each case was worked through over three small-group tutorials across the week.

The course is organised into six domains of learning that continue through all four years. They are 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 weekly case ties them together, so the science, the patient's story and the ethical or public health questions arrive at the same time.

The focus shifts each year. Year 1 covers how the healthy body is built and how it keeps its balance when challenged. Year 2 turns to the disease processes that affect each organ system. In Years 3 and 4 you learn on the wards and in general practice as a clinical apprentice, and Year 4 concentrates on the thinking an intern needs.

Research skills build steadily. Year 1 introduces research methods, Year 2 adds literature searching and critical analysis, and Year 3 applies research principles on placement. The AMC's 2023 report describes journal club and sessions on reading graphs and data being strengthened across the years. It all leads to the capstone project you complete in Year 4.

According to the AMC's 2023 report, the previous curriculum added teaching on climate and health. It included planetary health sessions in Year 1, and Year 4 teaching on the carbon and waste footprint of anaesthetics and unnecessary pathology tests. The school is also a Beacon Site for sustainable quality improvement (SusQI), accredited by the Centre for Sustainable Health Care in Oxford. SusQI means improvement projects that also cut the environmental impact of care. So far the school's SusQI training has run through a graduate certificate and as a short course for physician trainees.

In Years 1 and 2 the week follows the PBL cycle, one case per week. The 2027 Year 1 calendar gives each case a title, such as Night Starvation or A Rural Town, and the first case, Blood on the Road, runs across two weeks.

The school's weekly timetable for 2026, written for the previous Year 1 course, shows how a case runs. Each case is worked through in three PBL tutorials: the first on a Friday afternoon, the second on the Wednesday morning after, and the last on the following Friday. Wednesdays start with an hour-long clinical debriefing session, and Fridays with a two-hour clinical and communication skills session, such as vital signs, history taking or an introduction to physical examination.

In weeks 2 to 4 of that timetable, Tuesday from noon to 6.30 pm was the laboratory practical: cardiovascular anatomy, blood pressure physiology, then infection control in microbiology. Most science, public health and professional development lectures were delivered by Zoom, while PBL tutorials, skills sessions and practicals were face to face. The first teaching week also had two full-day bioethics intensives at the Broadway campus.

The 2027 first-year calendar starts with orientation in the week of 18 January. Semester 1 runs to a study week and a mid-year exam week at the end of June, followed by a two-week break. Semester 2 starts on 19 July and ends with a study week and exams in late October. There are non-teaching weeks at Easter and in late September.

The clinical years are longer. In the 2027 calendar, Year 3 starts with an orientation week on 11 January and runs to mid-December, with a two-week break in June.

The school's 2026 Year 1 timetable, for the previous course, shows anatomy taught through lectures and through practicals in the laboratory at the Darlinghurst campus, starting with an introduction to the anatomy lab. Lectures covered body systems and regions with their clinical anatomy, such as the cardiovascular system and the upper limb.

The 2026 first-year forms include an Anatomy Code of Conduct and a form on expected behaviour in the clinical laboratory, which you sign before starting. For labs and clinical skills, the 2026 enrolment checklist asked first years to buy a lab coat, clear goggles, a stethoscope and a suture practice kit, and to keep them for later years.

Your first patients are simulated. Year 1's communication skills block moves from patient-centred interviewing to full history-taking and physical examination, practised in simulated cases. Through its Volunteer Simulated Patient Program, the school trains community members to play a scripted patient and give you feedback from the patient's side. They are never used for examinations of sensitive areas or for anything involving needles.

Real clinical settings come early too. The school says placements run through all four years, in places such as general practice, public and private hospitals and aged care facilities. In Years 1 and 2 these take the form of supervised workshops and clinical site visits.

Year 2 builds your examination of each organ system, normal and abnormal, and asks you to use clinical reasoning to reach a diagnosis. Year 3 is the first full-time clinical year. At Hawkesbury, for example, the school says students manage patients hands-on under the supervision of ward consultants. By Year 4 you are expected to draw up investigation and treatment plans much as an intern would.

You sit formative assessments, which are practice tests for feedback, and summative ones, which decide whether you progress. Much of what is published about assessment comes from the AMC's 2023 report, the latest one available for the Sydney program. It says results use the university scale from fail to high distinction, with 50% as the pass mark.

Summative written exams are sat on computer under supervision, using ExamSoft software, while practice tests run through Blackboard, the online learning system. Clinical skills are tested in OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations). In an OSCE you move round a circuit of timed stations, each testing one task, such as taking a history or examining a patient. OSCEs are used in both practice and summative assessment.

In the clinical years, supervisors also assess you with mini-CEXs (mini clinical examination exercises): short, observed encounters with a patient, marked on the spot. The school uses recognised standard-setting methods, called modified Angoff and borderline regression, to set fair pass marks. Examiners at every clinical school are trained centrally so that all sites mark to the same standard.

After practice written exams the Head of Assessment gives general feedback, and tutors give feedback after practice OSCEs. After the end-of-year exams you are told which quarter of the year group your result falls in. Results go to the School's Board of Examiners, then to the University's.

In the 2027 calendar, the new Year 1 course has a mid-year and an end-of-year exam week, and the new Year 3 course has one exam period in November. You must finish the degree within six years, including any approved leave, and cannot normally take more than one year of leave at a time.

• The capstone project is completed and assessed in Year 4.
• If you repeat a course, you may be excused a continuous assessment item you passed in the previous two years, but only in exceptional circumstances.
• Under the school's Fitness to Practice Policy, you must tell the school about any criminal conviction or health issue that could affect your clinical placements.

In Years 3 and 4 your placements are delivered through seven clinical schools: three in Sydney, one in Melbourne and three rural. You are allocated by ballot. The school takes your preferences into account but cannot guarantee a first preference, because each site has a limited number of places.

Placements cover hospitals, general practice, aged care and community services, in cities and rural areas, and in Years 3 and 4 they include both public and private hospitals. St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, Mercy Hospital Werribee and St John of God Ballarat are Catholic hospitals. Rural placements are open to domestic students only.

The rural schools in Lithgow, Wagga Wagga and Ballarat belong to Notre Dame's National Rural Clinical School network. Placements with them are available to some students, not all. The network is part of the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training program, funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, which aims to build the rural health workforce by training students in the country. The school says the program provides accommodation, scholarships and pastoral care.

Sites use students in different ways. Hawkesbury takes 25 Year 3 students for the whole year, and four to six Year 4 students at a time on four-week rotations. Wagga Wagga's clinical school building has teaching facilities for students in both clinical years. Lithgow houses rotating and visiting students in a six-bedroom house 500 metres from the hospital and in four ensuite rooms in the clinical school building.

The school registers you as a medical student with the Medical Board of Australia while you are enrolled. Before placements you also provide a criminal record check and your immunisation records. The 2026 first-year forms list the NSW Health student checks, including a national police check and vaccination record, plus a Working with Children Check and a first aid certificate (units HLTAID009 and HLTAID011).

There are no optional courses in the MD: every course in the program rules is compulsory. Choice comes through the elective periods and your capstone project instead.

Year 4 includes an elective clinical rotation in an area of medicine that interests you. For the 2027 Year 4 group, still on the previous course, it is a four-week block straight after the final exams, starting on 11 October, followed by an elective term report. The 2027 calendar for the new Year 3 course also ends with a four-week elective learning period after the November exams.

You choose the topic of your capstone project, an applied research or audit project in an area that interests you. If academic general practice appeals, the school's Primary Care Research group invites students to explore placements, mentoring and collaboration with its researchers.

The School of Medicine is at the Darlinghurst campus, 160 Oxford Street, about a 10-minute walk from Kings Cross station. It has a lecture theatre, a library and rooms for workshops, clinical skills and PBL groups, plus simulated hospital wards and consultation suites. According to the AMC's 2023 report, a second lecture theatre was turned into a simulation lab.

The university has no on-campus housing in Sydney. Students find rooms in residential colleges, shared student apartments or private rentals.

Each clinical school has its own teaching space. Lithgow's building has a 120-seat lecture theatre, consulting and tutorial rooms, and SimMan training areas (SimMan is a computer-controlled patient manikin). Auburn has a simulation centre in a building finished in 2013. The Melbourne Clinical School has a large lecture theatre, a library, a clinical skills simulation area, laboratories and a student common room.

Wagga Wagga's purpose-built clinical school opened in August 2014 with a lecture theatre, consulting suites, tutorial rooms and a student common room. Ballarat students use classrooms in Baileys Mansion, a tutorial room in the hospital's new ward building and the refurbished medical library at Ballarat Health Services next door. Hawkesbury's hospital has simulation space, a lecture theatre and tutorial rooms.

The school says practising academics support and mentor you through the course. Student Success runs workshops on time management, academic writing, referencing, stress management, memory skills and exam preparation.

According to the AMC's 2023 report, a Head of Student Matters provides support alongside the university's services, and students whose assessment results suggest they need help are referred to support services. In 2023 a Post-Entry Language Assessment was brought into first year to spot students who may need help with academic writing. MANDUS, the Medical Association of Notre Dame University Sydney, which represents medical students, meets school leaders regularly to raise students' concerns.

Commencing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students can take a one-week intensive preparation program in December, run by the Indigenous Health and Medicine team.

The program publishes inherent requirements: the abilities you need in eight areas, from ethical behaviour and communication to sensory abilities and sustainable, timely performance. The school follows the Inclusive Medical Education framework of Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand, and its Access and Inclusion team can discuss reasonable adjustments in confidence.