The Buckingham Medicine course

The school calls its approach guided learning. Staff set out the route, but you are expected to take charge of your own progress and to aim for understanding rather than memorising. Each Phase 1 unit has a workbook that sets out every session, and the 26 workbooks are free in digital form.

Each session is built as a cycle. You meet new ideas, usually in a lecture, work on them straight away with your group while they are fresh, then follow up in self-directed study. The school's standards for Phase 1 group work (2023) and workbooks (2024) set out how this runs.

In Phase 2 you learn in the clinical environment, rotating through blocks arranged the way care is delivered in GP surgeries and hospitals. Each block has an educational supervisor who oversees your progress.

The 2026 Phase 1 timetable shows how a week is built. Each day has a morning session from 09:00 to 12:45 and an afternoon session from 13:45 to 17:30. In year 1, each unit has one fixed half-day, two other mornings hold timetabled sessions outside the units, and the rest is self-directed study. This is a week in term 1.

Year 2 has fewer unit sessions. A term 5 week starts on Monday morning with a Student Selected Component (SSC), a strand where you choose a topic to study in depth. The clinical skills course is on Wednesday afternoon, Health and Disease in Society and the Nervous System fill Thursday, and Head and Neck is on Friday morning.

Self-directed study is not guaranteed free time. You must stay available for last-minute changes, and these slots can also be used for placements, Narrative Medicine and other compulsory sessions.

• Monday: a timetabled session in the morning, then the Molecules, Genes and Disease unit in the afternoon.
• Tuesday: Clinical Problem Solving 1 in the morning, then Tissues of the Body.
• Wednesday: the Clinical Skills Foundation Course in the morning, with the afternoon for self-directed study.
• Thursday: self-directed study all day.
• Friday: another timetabled morning session, then Metabolism in the afternoon.

Anatomy is not a separate course at Buckingham. Most Phase 1 units build the anatomy of their body system into one or more sessions, planned with the school's anatomy lead. This is set out in the school's 2023 standards for Phase 1 group work.

In an anatomy session, each table works on a different task and groups rotate between them. Tasks can include identifying key features on anatomical models, reading X-rays and cross-sectional scans such as CT, surface anatomy (finding structures from the outside of the body), virtual anatomy software and dissecting animal organs. Each task is written up in the unit workbook, so you keep a record of what you learned.

Clinical learning begins in your first term with the Clinical Skills Foundation Course (CSFC), a half-day every week of Phase 1. From term 2 your group is attached to a GP practice and rotates between the practice, the medical school and a partner hospital: Stoke Mandeville, Warwick or Milton Keynes. The school runs a free coach to Warwick. For the other two, groups make their own way, and buses run from Buckingham to both towns.

The second strand is Narrative Medicine, which starts in year 1. You are assigned a patient living with a chronic, or long-term, illness and stay in regular contact with them for 18 months. At a couple of local practices you may meet your patient in person. The point is to understand illness through one person's experience of it.

In Phase 2, from year 3, you are on clinical placement full time. Most of your learning takes place with patients and doctors at your base hospital, with GP, mental health and community placements built into the blocks.

Buckingham assesses you through written papers, structured clinical exams and an e-portfolio. The detailed rules are in the school's Code of Practice for Assessment, in force from May 2026. It sets five progression points: the end of year 1, year 2, the Junior Rotation and the Senior Rotation, and graduation. At each one you must pass every component on its own, and grades are simply Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory.

Year 1 papers mix question types, including multiple choice, filling in a blank and clicking on the right part of an image. Many come as question sets: a short patient case followed by linked questions. From year 2, papers use single best answer questions, where you pick the best of several options, in the style of the national final exam.

In Phase 1, a formative exam in week 9 of each term gives you practice that does not count, and there are mock papers before the real ones. In Phase 2 there is an AKT and a CPSA at the end of each rotation.

In the clinical exams, examiners rate you in four areas at every station: communication, practical skills, knowledge and problem solving, and professionalism. Stations become more complex and more integrated as the course goes on. In Phase 2, some stations involve real patients or simulated patients, who are trained actors.

If you fail a component, you get one more attempt at it in a qualifying exam in the same academic year, which in Phase 1 falls in December. Any further attempt is at the examiners' discretion, and you can normally repeat a stage of the course only once. Narrative Medicine and the portfolio must also be passed in their own right.

The final exams include the UK Medical Licensing Assessment (UKMLA). From the 2024 to 2025 academic year, you need a pass in it for your degree to qualify you to register as a doctor. It has two parts. The Applied Knowledge Test is set nationally by the Medical Schools Council, and the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment is run by each school.

• National AKT: two computer-based papers of 100 single best answer questions, each lasting two hours, taken on consecutive days. The pass standard is that of a doctor in their first week of foundation training, the two-year, work-based training programme new UK doctors start after graduating.
• Final CPSA: in its 2024 submission to the GMC, the school described 12 ten-minute stations over two days. You pass by meeting the standard in at least 75% of stations, which is 9 of 12. The CPSA also covers sign-off of the 23 practical procedures.
• Portfolio: your e-portfolio is reviewed every year in the Annual Review of ePortfolio Progression (ARPP). It gives feedback only in Phase 1 and counts towards progression in Phase 2.
• Excellence: merits and distinctions are recorded separately from pass grades. Enough of them across the course can lead to the MB ChB with honours.

In Phase 1 you travel to a placement about once a week and arrange your own transport. The school's GP practice list, dated December 2025, runs from the Swan Practice in Buckingham itself to Danes Camp in Northampton, about 18 miles away. Greens Norton, about 13 miles away, has no public transport, so the school suggests sharing a car or taxi. Mileage beyond the first 25 miles each way is refunded.

For Phase 2 you are allocated a base hospital, which the school calls a Local Education Provider (LEP): an NHS trust that hosts your clinical teaching. There are five. By road from the Buckingham campus they range from 16 miles for Milton Keynes to 140 miles for Macclesfield. You are expected to move close to your base, and long commutes from home are strongly discouraged.

Allocation happens in term 6 of year 2, and in 2026 the results are due on 5 October. You rank all five bases, and each student gets a random computer-generated rank that has nothing to do with exam results. An algorithm then gives as many students as possible their first choice and places the rest in their highest-ranked base with space.

Some students are placed first through pre-allocation. Under the August 2026 policy you can apply on four grounds. The first two are caring for a child under 18 as a parent or legal guardian, and being the primary carer for a disabled partner, sibling or parent. The others are a health condition or disability that needs ongoing treatment in that area, and extraordinary circumstances. Approval can be to one hospital or to a region.

Once allocations are confirmed, you would not normally be allowed to change base, and there are no swaps between students. A change is considered only for new exceptional circumstances, such as a disability-related need, pregnancy or a safeguarding concern.

Every student travels beyond their base at some point in Phase 2. Warwick-based students, for example, have GP placements in Northampton and Bicester, 36 to 46 miles from Warwick. The school strongly advises access to a car. You pay for travel within 25 miles of your base and can claim extra mileage beyond that, up to a limit per journey.

Student Selected Components (SSCs) run in both phases and let you study a topic of your choice in more depth. Under the school's March 2025 standards, the Phase 1 SSC runs over terms 5 and 6, about 160 hours in all. It has two parts: a compulsory weekly talk from an expert speaker, starting with research methods, and a group project run by a member of staff on their own research interest.

You choose projects in order of preference. Past topics include whether depression can be cured, diabetes awareness, gut microbes in health and disease, the history of medicine and Creative Anatomy. You are assessed on one piece of work, such as a literature review, a poster, a recording or creative writing, with written work capped at 2,000 words.

The work is marked against eight of the GMC's Outcomes for Graduates, the list of what every new UK doctor must be able to do. You need at least six at a satisfactory level. The mark is formative, so it does not count on its own, but it goes into your e-portfolio, and unsatisfactory work must be resubmitted.

In Phase 2, the 2026 and 2027 calendars include SSC weeks each summer. The elective comes after the final exams and the assistantship and lasts about three to four weeks in May. You write a reflective report on it, with a report from your supervisor confirming you completed it.

Intercalating means pausing your medical degree to complete a separate one-year degree, then returning. At Buckingham it is optional, and it means a one-year degree at Buckingham itself, ideally taken between Phase 1 and Phase 2. The degree needs to run from January to January to fit the medical school's calendar. This is set out in the school's January 2025 standards for intercalation.

You apply during terms 4 and 5 of year 2, and the Phase 1 Lead can give you the list of available courses. To be eligible you need satisfactory results in every assessment so far, no outstanding concerns about your academic work or professional behaviour, and your fees paid up.

Intercalating at another university is not normally allowed. Because Buckingham runs on a January calendar, it would mean pausing your clinical training or missing more than one year of the MB ChB.

Phase 1 exams are held in the Chandos Road Building in Buckingham, and some Phase 2 exams use the Academic Centre at Milton Keynes University Hospital. The university's medical library resources are at the Franciscan Library at Verney Park, with core textbooks also available as e-books.

If you are based at Milton Keynes, the hospital's own clinical skills and simulation team also teaches you. Its page, last updated in 2021, lists 18 skills taught across years 3 and 4, such as cannulation (placing a thin tube in a vein), urinary catheterisation, blood cultures and suturing. It also describes simulation sessions on acute illness, trauma and heart conditions.

The same page describes a ward simulation with actors, designed at the hospital in 2019, in which final-year students work at the level of a first-year foundation doctor.

You need your own laptop or tablet, as many exams run through the Examplify app and a secure exam browser. You also buy your own stethoscope, and models with recording or Bluetooth features cannot be used in clinical exams.

You are given a personal tutor when you start, although your tutor may change as staff move and as you enter a new phase. Your tutor is the first person to go to with any problem, and gives feedback on exam results, helps with your portfolio and talks through careers.

In Phase 2 you also have an educational supervisor for each block. You arrange to meet them at least three times per block, and at the end they check you have met the block's requirements.

The Professional Development Team teaches professionalism, organises academic support with the placement hospitals, runs the concerns process and offers careers guidance. The university's Wellbeing Hub handles health and wellbeing support, including reasonable adjustments for the course.

Anyone with an Unsatisfactory grade, or picked out by the examiners as needing help, is referred for academic support. The Student Support Team also runs careers workshops and talks, and can help with choosing a specialty, applying for electives, CVs and interviews.