The Wollongong Medicine course

The school's main teaching method is case-based learning (CBL). You learn around a clinical problem, such as a patient with chest pain or painful joints, and use it to drive what you study in the underlying science. The learning objectives for each case are worked out at an introduction session, and a facilitator guides your tutorial group through them.

Science is not taught as separate subjects first. Anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pathology and the other medical sciences are linked to the case you are working on and to the body system of the block. Most of the science comes in Phase 1; later phases concentrate on applying it with patients.

Five themes run through all four years: Clinical Practice, Sciences for Medicine, Health and Society, Professionalism and Leadership, and Research and Scholarship. The subject outlines set separate assessments for clinical practice, the medical sciences, research and scholarship, and professionalism and leadership, so you are examined on professional behaviour and research skills as well as medical knowledge.

Local doctors teach throughout, from lectures by Illawarra and Shoalhaven specialists to supervision on placement. Phase 1 was reorganised from the 2025 intake, and the school's latest published subject outlines, for 2024-25, describe Phase 1 as it was before that change.

The current year planners lay out year 1 in four-week cycles. In the 2024-25 outline, the timetable ran in two-week cycles around each case, with days from about 8.30am into the late afternoon. A fortnight mixed the CBL introduction, tutorial and wrap-up with teaching sessions, symposia, one clinical skills session a week, anatomy practicals and set times for online modules.

Most sessions are at your base campus, but everyone travels: to Wollongong for anatomy about once a week, and to Shoalhaven for whole-cohort teaching about once a fortnight. In the 2024-25 outline one slot each fortnight was a clinical placement, and other gaps were guided independent learning time for your own study. The university suggests planning on around 48 hours of study a week, including independent study.

The week changes shape in the clinical phases. In Phase 2 your preceptors, the clinicians who supervise you, organise your days, and you are expected to spend 24 to 32 hours a week in clinical work. In Phase 3 you spend up to four days a week in general practice and the hospital, plus the weekly academic day. In Phase 4 the expectation is 32 hours a week of clinical work.

Anatomy classes are held in the university's Anatomy Facility in Building 41 on the Wollongong campus. Students from all three campuses travel there for anatomy classes during Phase 1.

Classes use prosections: parts of donated bodies that the lab's technical staff have dissected in advance to show key structures clearly. The bodies come from local people who registered with UOW's Body Donation Program, which began in 2005. The 2024-25 Phase 1 outline adds computer imaging and anatomical models, and the 2026 handbook's list of teaching methods also mentions dissection classes.

Before you can enter the laboratory you complete an authorisation process under the Anatomy Act 1977, explained at a compulsory Introduction to Anatomy session in week 1. The laboratory has an open-plan area for 60 students and a tutorial room for 20. You can book private study time during scheduled medical school anatomy classes, at least two working days ahead. The 2024-25 outline also sets a practice anatomy quiz in the second half of year 1, to help you find gaps before the end-of-year exam.

Your first patient contact comes in year 1, in the community rather than on hospital wards. In general practice you go alone or in a pair and sit in on consultations. You may take a history, examine a patient or give a vaccination under close supervision, then talk through the diagnosis and plan with your GP preceptor. In the 2024-25 outline these placements took one session a fortnight.

Community health placements take you to organisations working in Aboriginal health, ageing and allied or community health, so you see what other health workers do. The Indigenous Community Immersion placement lets you learn from local Aboriginal people about the social factors that shape their health. It also builds your understanding of cultural safety and the health care challenges Aboriginal people face.

In Phase 1, hospital time is mostly observation. In the 2024-25 outline, placements at Wollongong or Shoalhaven hospital in the last part of Phase 1, early in year 2, introduced hospital work to prepare you for Phase 2. From Phase 2 most of your learning happens with patients: on the wards in Phase 2, in general practice and the emergency department in Phase 3, and as a student intern in Phase 4.

The MD is graded Excellent, Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory rather than with marks such as High Distinction or Credit. Each phase counts as one subject, and to move on you need at least Satisfactory in every summative task, meaning every assessment that counts. Formative tasks give feedback only, but you are still expected to complete them. In the 2024-25 outlines resits are by invitation and the best resit grade is Satisfactory. A resit period follows each exam period.

Exam periods fall at the end of year 1 and at the end of Phases 2 and 3, with a test at the end of Phase 1. In the 2024-25 outlines, the written papers use best-of-five multiple-choice questions and extended matching questions, where you pick answers from a list of about ten options. From Phase 2 they add modified essay questions, a series of questions about one patient's presentation, and the Phase 2 exam is two three-hour papers.

Pass marks are set by standard-setting methods such as the Angoff method, in which examiners judge how a borderline student would perform, rather than by a fixed percentage. In the 2024-25 outlines, weekly online quizzes and end-of-block tests in Phase 1, and ten online quizzes in Phase 3, let you practise the exam style without it counting.

OSCEs test practical skills: you move round timed stations, each with its own examiner, taking a history, examining, explaining or doing a procedure with a real or simulated patient. In the 2024-25 outline the Phase 1 OSCE, in April or May of year 2, had 15 stations, and you had to pass at least 60% of them as well as the overall mark. Phases 2 and 3 each have an OSCE too.

On placement, from Phase 2, your supervisors record Supervised Learning Events in an online ePortfolio. Mini-CEX (mini clinical evaluation exercises) are observed consultations: a doctor watches you with a patient and gives feedback. Case-based discussions test your reasoning about a patient you have looked after, and DOPS (direct observation of procedural skills) check procedures such as cannulation or recording an ECG.

The school's 2026-27 supervisor guides give rough targets. Phase 2 has about three mini-CEX and three case-based discussions per placement; Phase 3 has about two mini-CEX and one case-based discussion a month. Each of these years needs at least six DOPS and two professional behaviour evaluations, and the events are judged together at the end of the phase, not one at a time. In the 2024 outlines, PRINT needed 12 mini-CEX, and examiners with concerns could send you to a six-week supervised Directive term instead of an elective or selective.

Where you study depends on your track, which you choose when you apply and cannot change later. On the Rural End-to-End track you live and study in rural NSW for all four years, starting at the Shoalhaven or Southern Highlands campus. On the Rural-Regional Combined track you spend Phase 1 at a campus and are then placed across regional, rural and remote NSW. Its Health Access Stream focuses on general practice and community health in the Illawarra, Shellharbour, Kiama and Shoalhaven areas.

The school allocates every clinical placement; you do not choose. It asks all students to be ready to move to any of its rural NSW teaching sites, for up to a full year, and to expect rural placements in every phase. You arrange your own travel, and the school warns that public transport often will not fit the timetable. Your campus is also allocated, with your home address taken into account, and transfers are not allowed.

The school's clinical training sites are in eight regions of NSW: the Illawarra, Shoalhaven, Southern Highlands, Murrumbidgee, Clarence Valley, Northern Rivers, Central West and Outback. The course page describes teaching across three campuses and eight rural hubs. Each Phase 3 hub is led by a Regional Academic Leader, a doctor who oversees your learning and progress, with a placement facilitator who organises your sessions.

End-to-End students get priority for school accommodation in year 1, and students at the rural campuses may get help with Phase 1 travel between campuses. Before Phase 3 the school tells you where it recommends you live. Hubs outside the Illawarra rated Modified Monash 2 or above, on the national scale of how rural a place is, qualify for a travel allowance. You can claim it per kilometre for placement trips of at least 60 km return, if you live in approved accommodation and car-pool where possible.

Phase 4 gives you two terms of your own choosing. The elective is a six-week structured placement in a discipline you pick, anywhere in the world, subject to government travel safety advice and the university's indemnity (insurance) rules. The selective is also six weeks in a discipline you choose, but it must be in Australia. A hospital-based term is preferred for both; other clinical settings can be approved if you will do 32 hours a week of clinical work.

You can make one of the two, but not both, a research term, in the community or at a specialist site. You then write it up in the format of a medical journal article within two weeks of finishing.

Since 2020 NSW Health has employed final-year medical students in paid Assistant in Medicine (AiM) posts, working under supervision as part of a clinical team. In the 2024 Phase 4 outline, if the school nominates you, an AiM post can replace your PRINT, elective or selective term, or all of Phase 4, and you still complete the usual assessments. Posts depend on NSW Health funding and can be withdrawn at short notice, so you must also arrange a back-up term.

Each campus has a Clinical Skills Centre with purpose-built facilities, where the simulated patient sessions are held. In Wollongong the school's Learning Centre is on the ground floor of Building 28, with textbooks, computers and swipe-card access until midnight. Shoalhaven students also have a Learning Centre in the school's Building 304, and study rooms in the Ray Cleary Building.

The hospitals have their own student spaces. The Wollongong Hospital has a student study area on level 8 with a tutorial and clinical skills room, and the hospital library on level 9. Shoalhaven District Memorial Hospital has a student study space with video-conferencing for tutorials, and the school's offices at Wollongong, Shoalhaven and Bowral hospitals lend out doctor's bags, anatomical models and textbooks.

Grafton Base Hospital has a UOW student area with a simulated GP examination room and an eight-person study room with video-conferencing. On the hospital grounds, a simulation suite and clinical skills lab hosts teaching every Wednesday from UOW and the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM), covering simulations, clinical skills, tutorials and grand rounds.

The school's Head of Students monitors every student's progress, runs a counselling system for students who are struggling, and advises on course rules and procedures. You make appointments by email or phone. The Head of Students is also the person to tell if an emergency stops you sitting an exam, or if there is a safety incident on placement.

In Phase 3 you can take academic or personal concerns to your hub's Regional Academic Leader or placement facilitator, and the Head of Students stays available for wellbeing and academic progress. The weekly academic day also gives students in each hub a chance to support each other. The Dean's welcome to Phase 3 says feeling alone after moving is normal, and urges you to raise concerns early.

The school publishes guidance on pregnancy, childbirth and adoption during the MD. Because the academic year is long, it says breaks matter, and it does not expect or encourage extra clinical work in the holidays. If the science is a struggle in Phase 1, the Medical Sciences team asks you to contact them early.