The Sydney Medicine course

The course is organised around eight vertical themes, areas of capability that run through all four years rather than being taught once. They are basic and clinical sciences, clinical skills, diagnostics and therapy, and research, evidence and informatics. The others are population health, Indigenous health, ethics, law and professionalism, and interprofessional teamwork. Each year's learning and assessment draw on all eight together.

Year 1 uses team-based learning (TBL). You prepare before class, then work in teams on problems built around real clinical scenarios, with anatomy, biochemistry, immunology, microbiology, pathology, pharmacology and physiology folded into each case. The school describes this as a flipped classroom: much of the content is online for you to review on your own, and one day a week is kept free for this flexible learning.

Learning then spirals, meaning topics you met in Year 1 come back in Year 2 in more depth, now in hospital and community settings. The school calls Year 2 guided experiential learning: you learn mainly by doing, under supervision, with some classroom teaching for the whole year group. In Years 3 and 4 most learning happens in wards, outpatient clinics and community clinics.

You also take part in an interprofessional learning activity alongside nursing, dentistry, allied health and pharmacy students, to prepare for team-based healthcare.

The unit descriptions set out how a week is divided. In Year 1, one day a week is at your clinical school learning clinical skills, and one day is kept for flexible learning, mainly reviewing online material. The rest of your study follows the current body-system block through team-based learning. Each block lasts three to six weeks, so the topic changes roughly once a month.

Year 2 opens with three weeks on core concepts in primary care and acute medicine. Throughout the year a typical week is three days at your clinical school, one day in the community and one day of flexible learning, with occasional classroom sessions for the whole year group.

In Years 3 and 4 the week follows your rotation, in hospital wards, outpatient clinics and community clinics. Across the course the placement requirement averages 16.5 hours a week over 140 weeks. Each year starts with a compulsory Orientation Week.

Anatomy is not taught as a separate subject. In Year 1 it is one of the sciences folded into each body-system block, alongside physiology, biochemistry and pathology. So you learn the anatomy of the heart and lungs in the cardiovascular and respiratory blocks. Basic anatomy is assumed knowledge on entry. From Year 2 the focus shifts to clinical anatomy, applied in simulated and real clinical settings.

On the Camperdown campus, anatomy is based in the Anderson Stuart Building, home of the Discipline of Anatomy and Histology and the university's Body Donor Program. Bodies donated through the program are used to teach anatomy to the university's medical, dental and allied health students. The building also houses the J.T. Wilson Museum, which holds more than 660 prosections, specimens already dissected by experts to show structures clearly, from every region of the body.

Dubbo stream students have an anatomy teaching laboratory in their own building, opened in 2022, and their teaching also uses 3D modelling and virtual and augmented reality. In Sydney, the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator, due to open in 2028 across the Camperdown campus and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital site, will include a new anatomy teaching and mortuary facility.

Clinical learning starts early: the school says you gain hands-on clinical experience from as early as your second week, through its clinical schools. Before you start you need a current first aid certificate and must meet NSW Health clinical compliance checks, including a Working with Children Check. As a student you are also registered with the Medical Board of Australia.

In Year 1 your clinical school day teaches you to take a structured medical history and examine people in simulated or clinical settings. You practise on healthy adults, models and simulated patients, and on real patients where appropriate. The basic procedures you learn are linked to the body system you are studying in class.

Year 2 puts you with patients most days. Across three clinical-school days and a community day each week you take histories from patients, families and carers, examine patients, build lists of likely diagnoses and choose tests to narrow them down. You also learn basic life support and the basics of safe prescribing.

By Years 3 and 4 you are full time in clinical settings, first in the specialty blocks and then in the medicine, surgery and general practice teams of the pre-internship year.

Sydney uses programmatic assessment. Instead of resting everything on a few end-of-year barrier exams, it collects many smaller assessments across each year into a portfolio. The course rules list four formats: exams and in-class assessments, skills-based and clinical assessments, group assessments, and submitted work. Assessments combine the eight themes and the year's units rather than testing them separately.

Each assessment, or data point, is graded Met Expected Standard, Borderline or Below Expected Standard. At the end of the year the Sydney Medical Program Portfolio Advisory Group looks at your performance across all of them. No single grade decides your progress; what counts is the overall pattern.

If your portfolio meets the standard, you progress. If it is borderline, you are offered further assessment, which is not a resit, and the new results are judged together with everything else. If it is below the standard, you repeat the year, retaking all of its units.

Some clinical skills are assessed in the workplace, where clinicians observe you with real patients, and you upload evidence to an ePortfolio. Learning Advisors follow your progress through a portfolio dashboard. The 2026 unit descriptions still describe assessment as data points that feed your portfolio. In December 2024 the AMC noted the school's plan to judge portfolios against broad areas of capability instead, so check the current unit outlines for the model your year will use.

The course rules also set firm limits. You may repeat only one of the four years; failing a second means you must show cause, formally arguing why you should be allowed to continue. You must complete every unit in a calendar year to move on, attendance rules apply, and serious or repeated unprofessional behaviour can lead to exclusion. The MD is awarded at a single pass grade.

If you leave after completing Years 1 and 2, you may, with permission, graduate with a Master of Health Studies, an exit award built into the course.

Metropolitan students rank all five metropolitan clinical schools: Central, Concord, Nepean, Northern and Westmead. The school allocates places using your preferences, the places available and any documented extenuating circumstances, and emails your result before Orientation Week. A top preference is not guaranteed, and each year Central Clinical School receives over 60% of first preferences. Your Year 1 allocation is final and lasts all four years.

Extenuating circumstances the school will consider include a serious health condition needing treatment available only in certain places, being a parent or carer, and elite sport or performance commitments. It will not consider your home address, travel, not having a car, accommodation, paid work or friendship groups. If new circumstances arise later, you can ask the Director of the Sydney Medical Program for a change.

You will not do every rotation at your own clinical school. Metropolitan students must do some rotations at other clinical schools or placement sites. These include all or part of child and adolescent health at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, which is not open for general allocation. Dubbo stream students are all allocated to the School of Rural Health in Dubbo, with clinical teaching centred on Dubbo Hospital.

Rural time follows the Commonwealth's Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training program. It requires at least 25% of each graduating domestic cohort to spend a whole academic year rurally. So a quarter or more of domestic students do an extended rural placement in Year 3 or Year 4 at Orange, Lismore or Broken Hill. There are priority categories if demand is high, and if too few apply, some domestic students may be required to go.

Extended rural placements are open only to students in Commonwealth Supported Places, and the requirement does not apply to international students. Half of domestic students must also spend at least four weeks rurally, usually in rural general practice during the General Practice term.

Within the university's Rural Health Precinct, its three rural clinical schools, you can get subsidised accommodation and wellbeing, cultural and social programs. Broken Hill provides free accommodation with private bedrooms. For rural placements with other partner organisations you usually arrange your own housing, and the faculty helps you look for financial support.

Year 4 contains two elective periods: an eight-week elective within Preparation for Practice 1 and a four-week vocational elective within Preparation for Practice 2. In both, you study an area of medicine of your own choosing.

You can spend four to eight weeks of your elective term on a clinical or research placement overseas, applying through the Student Placements team. Countries listed include Canada, China, Denmark, France, India, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. International students in the MD can apply for placements in their home country, or in Canada or the USA for North American students.

For extra rural experience there is a Medicine GP Rural Placement Elective. What the course does not offer is a semester abroad: its rules exclude international exchange and cross-institutional study, so all your units are taken at Sydney.

Intercalating means pausing a medical degree to complete an extra degree, usually a research Honours year. Sydney's MD has no built-in intercalated or Honours year. Research is part of the course instead, through the 14-week MD Research project that every student completes in Year 3.

If you want more research training, you can apply to take a higher degree by research at the same time as the MD. The school's Concurrent Enrolment Provisions, in force since October 2024, define this as a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) or a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). You enrol in the MPhil first, and can apply to upgrade to a PhD after at least two semesters if you are doing well in both.

The bar is high. You can apply only after finishing Year 1, having met the expected standard across your whole portfolio and placed in the top third of your year for theoretical and applied knowledge. Research study can start in Year 2 at the earliest. It is part time only, so you cannot hold a research scholarship, and your research cannot replace the MD Research project.

You are expected to do the research at your own clinical school, and a research project is not a reason to change clinical school. Before applying you discuss your plans with the Sydney Medical Program, and you need approval from its Director and your clinical school. The same rules allow a part-time postgraduate coursework degree from Year 2 if you are in the top half of your year.

The Susan Wakil Health Building on the Camperdown campus, opened in 2021 next to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, brings several health disciplines together and houses the Central Clinical School. Its eight levels hold 11 simulation rooms, a 350-seat lecture theatre and a multi-level library with group study rooms. There is also the CreateSpace, with virtual reality software, 3D printing and a podcast studio, and Yooroang Garang, a space for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Each clinical school has its own teaching base. Westmead has a Skills Lab for procedural skills and SiLECT, the Simulated Learning Environment for Clinical Training, with three large simulation rooms. Northern teaches from the Kolling Building at Royal North Shore Hospital, with a 200-seat auditorium, the Douglas Piper Library and the Sydney Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre.

Concord's Medical Education Centre has a 140-seat auditorium and a simulation centre, and Nepean's Clinical School Building has a 90-seat auditorium, 10 tutorial rooms and a clinical skills space. The clinical school at Royal Prince Alfred has clinical skills laboratories, and the Children's Hospital at Westmead has the Kim Oates Australian Paediatric Simulation Centre for emergency care of sick children.

In Dubbo, the 2022 teaching building has two learning studios for teamwork and the six-room Lonergan Foundation Simulation Suite, alongside tutorial rooms, clinical skills areas and a lecture theatre. The Dabaamalang Ngurang student centre adds kitchen, study and recreation space, and the site has an outdoor gym, pool and tennis court. First-year Dubbo students can live in purpose-built four- and five-bedroom share houses with furnished, lockable bedrooms.

Each clinical school has an education support team, and Central Clinical School names three doctors in student support roles. Learning Advisors, who follow your assessment portfolio, are also expected to spot students who need academic or pastoral support, or who have professional behaviour concerns, and help them.

In the regions, the Western NSW Regional Training Hub, based at the School of Rural Health, offers career and peer mentoring, career counselling and help with job applications and CVs. It also runs extra skills and simulation workshops and gives scholarships for workshops and conferences. In the Northern Rivers, the University Centre for Rural Health runs the Northern NSW Regional Training Hub with the local health district.

A pre-medical course runs in December, before Year 1, for incoming students without a health sciences background, and the school strongly recommends it for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. The part-time Year 3 option was designed with parents, carers and students with a disability or health condition in mind. Clubs include the Sydney University Medical Society (SUMS) and MIRAGE, a society for students interested in rural and general health.