The UWA Medicine course

The course is organised around six themes, called PLACES, for the roles a doctor plays: professional, leader, advocate, clinician, educator and scholar. UWA's 2024 MD Guidebook splits them into 24 strands, from medical ethics and law to Aboriginal health and evidence-based practice, and every unit teaches across them. General practice academics lead the leader, advocate and scholar themes. Boola Boola Djinda, the Medical School's Aboriginal health and wellbeing team, is listed among the discipline leads in each clinical year.

Year 1 is the most structured part of the course. Case-based learning built on core conditions ties the science to patients and introduces clinical reasoning, the step-by-step thinking that takes you from symptoms to a diagnosis.

From May of Year 2 the balance flips. Formal lectures become rare, and you learn as part of clinical teams, with small-group sessions on evidence-based practice in each discipline. Which patients you meet depends on your team, so self-directed learning matters more. Core curriculum lists of presentations, conditions, procedural skills and investigations, updated in 2024, guide what to cover.

In Year 1 the handbook lists about 24 hours of timetabled teaching a week. That is 6 to 8 hours of lectures, 4 of seminars, 4 of online learning, and 2 each of clinical skills, team-based learning, pathology and labs. The course page puts face-to-face contact at about 20 hours, plus at least 20 hours of personal study and online modules, for the first three semesters.

A first-year student described the rhythm in a 2023 UWA article. Most mornings started with a three- to four-hour lecture block, and on Fridays clinical skills and team-based learning sessions applied the week's work to cases. Each system block began with anatomy and physiology, with lab classes, then moved to several weeks of pathology, pharmacology, microbiology and immunology.

Year 2 is busier. The handbook lists about 25 contact hours a week in its campus term, then 30 to 40 hours a week on rotations. From the fourth semester the course page also warns of some after-hours and weekend placements.

The handbook counts about 40 weeks of contact time a year, and the course page a 42-week academic year. Rural Year 3 students have seven clinical sessions, two tutorial sessions and one personal study session a week.

Anatomy is not taught as a separate subject. It is part of the Integrated Medical Systems units of Year 1 and the first term of Year 2, which covers the musculoskeletal and neurological systems. A 2023 UWA article called anatomy and physiology the two most emphasised disciplines in each system block. Anatomy is examined in Year 1 by a 25-station OSPE (objective structured practical examination), a practical exam made up of separate stations. UWA says the first half of Year 2 uses the same kinds of assessment as Year 1.

UWA is licensed by the WA health department to accept whole-body donations, and its School of Human Sciences says these let medical students study real human bodies. At the start of each semester, a representative of each class studying anatomy reads an Act of Recognition and Gratitude to thank the donors. UWA also holds a memorial service for donors in Winthrop Hall every three years.

In Year 1 you learn communication, history taking and examination before using them on wards. The 2026 handbook also lists early clinical experiences among Year 1's teaching methods. Across the course, the 2024 guidebook describes clinical skills workshops using classmates, simulated patients and real patients, with examination of each other limited to the limbs, chest and abdomen. UWA's simulated-patient volunteers work with students from Year 2.

Your first hospital placements start in May of Year 2, when you join hospital teams. UWA asks supervisors to remember that Year 2 students are still finding their feet and to keep teaching basic. From Year 3 you take on more, and by the end of final year you are expected to have the knowledge and skills of a new intern.

UWA's patient-care protocol sets the ground rules. You always introduce yourself as a medical student and check the patient is comfortable with your involvement. If you are unsure about consent, you ask the most senior health professional available. Intimate examinations need a chaperone, and the patient's consent and the chaperone's identity must be recorded in the notes.

Assessment runs unit by unit, and to progress you must pass every unit in the year. Within each unit, key components are barriers: you must reach 50%, or the standard set in the unit outline, in each one, whatever your overall mark. In the clinical years these include the written exams, the OSCE, in-training assessment (your supervisors' ratings on placement), the portfolio and professional behaviour.

Written papers use multiple-choice and extended matching questions, short answers, image-based questions and modified essay questions, where a case unfolds in stages and you cannot go back (2024 guidebook and 2020 MD Assessment Framework). Under the 2025 progress rules, written exams in every year and the Year 2 to 4 OSCEs are standard set. That means a panel of experts judges where the pass line falls.

On placement, supervisors complete work-based assessments, which the Medical School likens to the assessments used for interns, along with structured clinical assessments marked against a checklist and professionalism rating forms. You also keep a procedural skills log and an e-portfolio of tasks across the PLACES themes, completing both in final year. In the professional development program you write a case-based ethics essay.

Professional behaviour is assessed in every unit, and attendance and participation count towards it. Short leave is capped at 10 university days a year. The 2024 guidebook says attending less than 80% of the required time means you cannot pass the unit, whatever your marks.

Any teaching or clinical staff member can file a Structured Professional Assessment Note about a concern, which a coordinator reviews with you. Three or more confirmed unsatisfactory assessments in a year count as failing the professional behaviour barrier; in the elective and Preparation for Internship, one is enough. The Board of Examiners, the panel that decides progress, then usually records a fail for that year or unit.

If you narrowly fail, usually with a mark of 45 to 49%, you may be offered a supplementary assessment. You will not be if you fail two or more units in a year, fail a deferred or supplementary assessment, or are on probation. Otherwise you repeat the failed part of the course the next year on probation, and failing again while on probation normally means exclusion. A course average of 80% or more earns the degree with distinction.

Year 1 and the first term of Year 2 are on campus, at Crawley and the UWA Health Campus at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre, Nedlands. From May of Year 2 you move through Perth hospitals and general practices: six-week rotations in Year 2, eight-week placements in Year 3 and two- to six-week blocks in Year 4. The AMC met UWA students at Sir Charles Gairdner, Royal Perth, Fiona Stanley, Perth Children's and St John of God Subiaco hospitals in 2019, and at King Edward Memorial in 2022.

In Year 2 you can apply to spend Year 3 with the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia (RCSWA), a division of the Medical School. It also takes students from the University of Notre Dame Australia and Curtin University. The 2026 handbook sets 60 rural Year 3 places, listed for domestic students.

You list preferred towns and are interviewed by a staff panel, and you can say whether getting your first-choice town or being placed with one or two colleagues matters more. Offers name the other students at your site, and sites are not negotiable.

RCSWA students live in their host town all year. Single students get furnished housing free. Students bringing a partner or family find their own and can claim a bursary of $6,000 plus $1,000 from Geraldton south, or $7,000 plus $1,000 from Karratha north. RCSWA pays your trip to the site and home again, and many town pages advise bringing a car. In 2026 RCSWA had 117 penultimate-year students across its 15 towns.

UWA calls the rural year longitudinal and integrated: you stay in one community and learn the disciplines side by side, rather than in separate blocks. Arrangements vary, though; Albany rotates students through hospital disciplines for two to four weeks each. Teaching in each town is led by medical coordinators, who are local doctors. You may work in the hospital and emergency department, general practices, Aboriginal community controlled health services (run by local Aboriginal communities), the Royal Flying Doctor Service and population health units.

After a rural Year 3 you can apply for RCSWA's competitive Final Year Program in Albany, Broome, Bunbury or Geraldton, where everything except the end-of-year exams happens at your site. It is self-funded: RCSWA pays travel and relocation, but you cover living costs and rent. The 2026 handbook also lists Kalgoorlie for the rural final-year units, with 2 to 8 UWA students per site. Every Perth-based final-year student has a rural general practice placement, arranged by RCSWA's Rural GP Placement team.

The elective (IMED5413) is a four-week clinical or clinical research placement in Australia or overseas, taken before Year 4 proper begins. In the 2026 handbook its window ran from 10 November 2025 to 22 February 2026. The 2024 guidebook lists international, interstate, metropolitan and rural options, and RCSWA oversees rural electives in WA. The elective is graded pass or fail on a professional behaviour assessment and an elective report. If Year 3 leaves you with supplementary assessments to sit, you must withdraw from your elective and take a remediation unit instead.

Year 4 also has a selective and the two-week PLACES rotation in Preparation for Internship. There you choose a theme: the clinician theme is an Extension placement in a clinical area you choose, and other themes are assessed by a research presentation or reflective writing (AMC, October 2024).

The longest-running choice is your scholarly activity stream, which runs through Year 3 and the first half of Year 4. In the research stream you are matched with a supervisor and project: a clinical audit, a systematic review or independent research. UWA advises independent research if you plan a research master's or PhD. You write a literature review and proposal and defend it orally, report progress in a seminar, then finish with a journal-style manuscript and a poster.

Service learning matches you with a not-for-profit organisation for Years 3 and 4 to deliver a project it sets. You first learn how not-for-profits work, project management, and survey and focus-group methods, then write a project proposal and an ethics document. Coursework streams draw on public health, health professions education, Aboriginal health and research foundations, with units such as epidemiology, biostatistics, health promotion, clinical teaching and emergency medicine research design.

Two optional specialisations are built from set scholarly activity units; the word does not mean specialist training. Aboriginal Health combines Aboriginal Health Research and Ethics, a 15-place Year 3 unit taught by the Aboriginal health team, with Epidemiology I and, in Year 4, Biostatistics I. Rural Health uses rural versions of the research or service-learning units, with research supervised by Rural Clinical School staff.

The 2024 guidebook tied Rural Health to a rural Year 3, but the 2026 handbook allows either option. The same handbook rule places Aboriginal Health specialisation students in the rural Year 3 units, though the urban Year 3 unit lists Aboriginal Health Research and Ethics as an option.

The routes UWA describes to an extra qualification run alongside the MD. Coursework scholarly activity units count 18 points towards a master's in public health, health professions education or Aboriginal health. In a 2023 UWA article, a final-year student described enrolling in the full Master of Public Health this way. The AMC reported in October 2024 that the newer Research Foundations stream offers a route into the Master of Clinical Science.

On the Assured Pathway, the IMSCP major does not lead to an Honours year. After graduating you can take a PhD or postgraduate study such as the Master of Infectious Diseases or the Graduate Certificate in Rural and Remote Medicine, alongside specialist training with a medical college.

The UWA Health Campus sits on the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre site in Nedlands. It shares the grounds with Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth Children's Hospital, PathWest and research institutes including the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and The Kids Research Institute Australia. Its biomedical teaching laboratories include histopathology and pharmacology labs, and the e-learning suites let groups view and project live digital microscope images.

The FA Hadley pathology museum, founded in 1959, holds more than 3,500 specimens, each displayed with an anonymous clinical history, and students can visit by arrangement. The J. Robin Warren Library, named after one of UWA's two Nobel laureates and refurbished for $7 million, is open to UWA students around the clock.

The Clinical Training and Evaluation Centre (CTEC), opened in 2000 in the CTEC and Anatomy Building on Hackett Drive, runs practical surgical skills workshops for MD students. It recreates a hospital and operating theatre, with a multi-station operating theatre lab, surgical instruments and simulators. Rural Clinical School offices offer study spaces and tutorial rooms, and Geraldton's has dedicated teaching and simulation spaces.

Each year group has a Sub-Dean, a senior academic you can see in confidence about personal circumstances, leave, special consideration and other serious issues. Separate Sub-Deans cover the rural penultimate year and international students. On Perth placements you can use wellbeing supports similar to junior doctors', such as employee assistance counselling. The 2024 guidebook also points to the Doctors' Health Advisory Service of WA, a confidential 24-hour line for doctors and medical students.

Beside your clinician mentor, the Student MeDMentor program, run with the Western Australian Medical Students' Society and UWA's UniMentor scheme, links first-year students with senior students. Junior doctors, most of them UWA graduates, teach at mock OSCEs and procedural skills workshops and coach students who need extra help with OSCE skills, as the AMC described in October 2024.

Boola Boola Djinda (Many, Many Stars) was set up in 2025 from the Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health. From the Bilya Marlee Building at Crawley it supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into and through medicine.

In rural towns, RCSWA's medical coordinators set learning goals with you, and the Regional Training Hubs offer career planning and rural mentors. If you are worried about meeting the course's inherent requirements, the core abilities expected of every student, the Medical School looks at ways to make teaching and assessment more accessible for you.