The Cambridge Medicine course

In years 1 and 2, each course is run by a University department. The 2025-26 programme specification shows Biochemistry running Molecules in Medical Science, Pathology running Biology of Disease and Pharmacology running Mechanisms of Drug Action. Physiology, Development and Neuroscience runs the physiology, histology, anatomy, reproduction and neurobiology courses. The Clinical School runs the clinical strand.

You work towards two qualifications at once. The Medical Sciences Tripos is Cambridge's honours degree course, and the 2nd MB is the professional qualification you need to continue in medicine. Most science papers count for both, but essay papers count only for the Tripos, and the clinical strand counts only for the 2nd MB.

Year 3 is less timetabled. It asks for more in-depth reading, research and critical analysis of your subject, and includes a research project or dissertation.

From year 4, learning moves to the wards, outpatient clinics and GP surgeries, and on placement there are generally no lectures. You join a clinical team, follow up a group of patients and watch special investigations. You also present patients on ward rounds and in multidisciplinary team meetings, where doctors, nurses and other professionals plan care together.

The clinical course is a spiral curriculum, meaning you revisit the same areas in more depth each year. Communication skills, practical skills, prescribing, professionalism, ethics and law, public health and palliative care run through all three years. Placements are backed by online resources and by seminars and tutorials on topics such as clinical pharmacology, radiology and communication skills.

In years 1 and 2 the week is heavily timetabled, typically with 20 to 25 hours of teaching. It mixes lectures, practical classes including dissection, seminars and College supervisions, plus occasional short clinical visits. On top of that, the University expects every undergraduate to put in at least about 35 hours a week of teaching and independent study combined, and often more. The year is split into 18 sets, each with its own timetable of lectures and practicals, so your week will not match every friend's.

Teaching runs in three eight-week terms a year, so term time is dense. In 2026-27 those teaching weeks run from 6 October to 4 December, from 19 January to 19 March, and from 27 April to 18 June. The vacations carry some academic work too, such as further reading, revision and set assignments, though the University says this should not take up all of your break.

On a clinical placement you spend your time with your team rather than in lectures. The Clinical School expects about 48 hours of work a week, counting both clinical time and your own study. The usual pattern is 9am to 5pm on weekdays, but some placements need earlier starts, later finishes, evenings or weekends.

Shift work alongside your team starts on year 4 placements, year 5 hospital placements include nights, and in year 6 you may be rostered for evenings, nights and weekends. Friday afternoons can be flexible when there is no clinical work, but regularly missing Fridays means failing the placement. You must attend at least 80% of a placement's days, and you keep a weekly log of what you did and learned.

In years 4 and 6 you normally have a one-hour bedside supervision each week, wherever you are on placement; in year 5 these run whenever you are based in Cambridge. The published minimums are a floor rather than the norm. Supervisors at Cambridge University Hospitals give at least eight sessions a term, and on a regional placement the minimum is three in four weeks, or four in six weeks. The clinical year runs almost all year, with short holidays between blocks.

Placement blocks are broken up by review and integration weeks back at the Clinical School, when the whole year is taught together again. In the 2024/25 timetable year 4 had four of them plus a formative review week in November, year 5 had four, and year 6 had two. Exam preparation weeks come before each Final MB, with two separate spells in year 6, one before the written papers and one before the clinical exams.

Anatomy is taught by the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. In year 1, Functional Architecture of the Body covers the chest, abdomen, pelvis and limbs. You learn it mainly by dissecting a donated body, cutting through the tissues yourself to find each structure. You also study prosections, which are specimens that staff have already dissected.

Lectures, applied anatomy seminars and clinical demonstrations support the dissection. The course also covers living anatomy, which means identifying structures on a living person, and medical imaging, with ultrasound scanning and 3D digital software used in teaching. At Addenbrooke's, consultants present patients with relevant signs, and ultrasound sessions show abdominal anatomy on volunteers in real time.

Functional Architecture of the Body is examined in June. A 90-minute paper counts for both the Tripos and the 2nd MB, and a two-hour essay paper counts for the Tripos only. The 2025-26 programme specification says the exam is taken online, with questions based on images of prosected specimens and clinical cases.

In year 2, Head and Neck Anatomy is taught in the Michaelmas term, the first term of the academic year, through prosections, lectures and applied anatomy sessions. It is examined by a 90-minute paper, which the 2025-26 specification says is taken online and mixes questions on images of specimens and clinical cases with short answer questions.

Students write tributes for the donors' committal service, and the department holds a yearly thanksgiving service for donors' relatives and friends. In the Easter term, the third term of the year, online sessions discuss the cause of death of the donors you have worked on.

The anatomy department's web page on links with clinical medicine describes clinical students coming back to the dissection room for revision sessions built on case scenarios and prosections. It lists the chest and peripheral joints in year 4, the abdomen and pelvis in year 5, and the head and neck in year 6.

Before clinical school, patient contact comes through Preparing for Patients, which has four strands spread across your first three years. Each builds communication skills and needs written coursework, and you must pass all four before you start year 4.

In year 1, strand A takes you to a GP surgery. The 2025-26 specification describes conducting a simple medical interview there and learning how consent and confidentiality work. In year 2, strand B moves to a hospital, where the interviews are more complex and cover why patients were admitted.

Strand C, in the summer between years 2 and 3, has you visit a statutory, voluntary or other organisation that supports people with health problems, at times you arrange. A College supervision in year 3 reviews it. Strand D runs through year 3, when you follow a pregnant woman and her family at home.

Regular patient contact begins in year 4, with a two-week introductory course and then Core Clinical Method placements. The focus shifts gradually from history taking and examination to practical skills, ending with the final-year apprenticeship.

In years 1 and 2, most science subjects are examined in June through a lecture paper, a practical paper and an essay paper. The first two count for the Tripos and the 2nd MB, the essay for the Tripos only. You get two attempts at each 2nd MB exam, with resits in September. Apart from professional qualifying exams like these, the course page says you usually cannot resit exams.

In the clinical years, placements are assessed through observation by the team, written tests, OSCEs and Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercises, where a clinician watches you with a patient and gives feedback. Each placement ends with a record grading your attendance, your knowledge and skills, and your professionalism, plus an overall grade of outstanding, pass, borderline or fail. A failed placement must be made up and passed before you can sit Final MB, and two or more borderline grades may also stop you being entered.

Each clinical year ends in a Final MB exam, with two attempts at each. Part I in year 4 is a three-hour written paper and a clinical exam of about 10 stations. Those stations mix OSCE tasks with simulated clinical encounters, where you consult a trained actor playing a patient, plus one practical skills station.

Part II in year 5 has two written papers and two circuits of six 11-minute stations, on paediatrics and obstetrics and gynaecology. Part III in year 6 has the national licensing tests below, plus a two-hour paper of five or six short answers on public health, ethics and law.

All UK medical students must pass the GMC's Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA) as part of their degree. At Cambridge its Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) is two computer-based papers of 100 single best answer questions, each two hours long, sat on consecutive days. Its Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA) is split over two years at Cambridge, a design the GMC found compliant with its requirements in February 2024. The year 5 stations count towards it, with a September resit, and year 6 adds two circuits of seven 15-minute stations.

You also sit the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA), a national two-hour online test of 60 questions, with the online British National Formulary, the standard reference on medicines, to hand. At Cambridge you must pass it before you can be awarded your medical degree. It builds on Practical Prescribing, a strand taught partly online across all three clinical years, covering dose calculations, reporting harmful reactions to drugs and spotting unsafe prescriptions.

Your clinical years are based on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, with much of your time at Addenbrooke's Hospital. The School's main hospital partner is Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Addenbrooke's and the Rosie Hospital for women's and maternity care. At least a third of your clinical learning happens in regional hospitals and GP practices across the East of England, and you also gain experience in community and mental health trusts in the region.

The 2025-26 programme specification names eight partner hospitals: Royal Papworth in Cambridge, and hospitals in Bedford, Huntingdon, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, King's Lynn, Stevenage and Peterborough. Everyone spends four weeks of year 4 Core Clinical Method at one of them, and year 4 and year 6 placements can be there or at Addenbrooke's. Placements vary between students, and each block follows your own schedule.

The School pays for accommodation near your placement hospital and for one return journey per placement, while you cover everyday living costs. On regional placements, supervision groups may be smaller and change with each placement. The Medical Library gives you access to hospital libraries across the region.

General practice teaching runs through all three clinical years. In year 4 you visit a practice in a group of four on four Fridays between October and December, learning history taking and examination with selected patients. After Christmas come two 2-week GP blocks: four days a week in the surgery, seeing patients who have come in with a problem that day, and a fifth day of seminars.

In year 5 you go back to the same practice for all three 2-week placements. You meet community carers and organisations that support people living with illness. You also complete an audit, which checks how well the practice's care measures up to an agreed standard, and follow two patients through the year.

In year 6 you spend six weeks at a practice in the East of England. Once your GP tutor has assessed you, you take histories, examine patients, make a management plan and present it to the tutor. Teaching focuses on eye, ear, nose and throat, and skin problems, and during the year you also do one out-of-hours shift.

Student-selected components (SSCs) are blocks where you choose what to study. The Clinical Dean's 2026 open day talk describes four: one in year 4 and three in year 5, including the elective. They come with research skills training, from literature searching to writing an abstract and presenting. A supervisor assesses each one, and your SSC portfolio must be complete before you can sit Final MB Part III.

The elective lasts seven weeks, between years 5 and 6. You can spend it in the UK or abroad, on a clinical or research area of your own choice, and College and national grants may help with the cost. In the 2024/25 timetable it ran from 30 June to 18 August.

In year 6 you write a detailed report on your elective, which is assessed and considered for a best elective report award.

Intercalation means spending a year studying one subject in depth outside the medical curriculum. At Cambridge it is built in as year 3 for every standard-entry student. Affiliated students, who already have a degree, skip it and finish in five years.

Biological and Biomedical Sciences lets you combine a major and a minor subject, with a dissertation of up to 6,000 words instead of a lab project. A Natural Sciences single subject goes deep into one science, though some have limited places and their own selection. Choices beyond science that have been popular with medical students include anthropology, management studies, philosophy and geography.

The MB/PhD programme adds a longer research stage, and about 10 students a year are offered places. You apply in year 3 and need to be in the top half of your year in Final MB Part I. You then spend usually three years, sometimes four, on a full-time PhD, keeping up clinical skills through weekly supervisions and monthly seminars. Your thesis must be submitted before you return for years 5 and 6.

MB/PhD projects can be in a Clinical School or biological sciences department, or an affiliated institute such as the Gurdon Institute, the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology or the Sanger Institute.

• Natural Sciences single subjects open to medical students: Biochemistry; Genetics; Pathology; Pharmacology; Physiology, Development and Neuroscience; Plant Sciences; Zoology; History and Philosophy of Science.

The Medical Library offers reading-list books, help with literature searches and a 60-computer study room. It provides clinical tools such as the British National Formulary and BMJ Best Practice. At the start of year 4 it registers you for NHS OpenAthens, a login for NHS e-journals and e-books.

The Clinical School is on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Much formal teaching happens in the School building and in the Deakin Centre next door, a purpose-built training centre with skills laboratories, rooms equipped for practising clinical skills. In the 2024/25 timetable the final clinical exams were held there. Addenbrooke's and every partner hospital also have a clinical skills unit with its own tutors.

Pre-clinical courses use Moodle, the University's online learning site, and clinical students have a Clinical School Moodle with year guides, assessment information and a Clinical Examination Handbook. Like every Cambridge student, you can also use the Cambridge University Library.

Your College adds teaching, pastoral and financial support. In the early years your Director of Studies guides your academic choices. In the clinical years you also have a Director of Clinical Studies, the College academic who oversees your clinical studies. Your Cambridge bedside supervisor contacts them if there are concerns about your attendance or welfare.

The Clinical Dean's 2026 open day talk describes welfare support in tiers: your College, a Sub-Dean for Welfare and the Clinical School Mental Health Service. The School funds that service so that students with serious mental health difficulties can see a psychiatrist quickly, and a psychologist if needed. A Medical and Veterinary Student Progress Panel also keeps an overview of student progress across the course.

In years 5 and 6 you have a one-to-one progress review, either with your College's Director of Clinical Studies or with a senior member of the Clinical School teaching team.

The GMC's 2024 report describes what happens if a final-year student fails the written exam. The assessment team gets in touch within 48 hours, an assessment lead helps plan revision, and the student is excused from placement for remedial teaching. Students returning from time out or preparing for a clinical resit can have six extra one-hour bedside supervisions.

In years 1 to 3, your College and the Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre arrange most disability support. In the clinical years, the School of Clinical Medicine's Student Academic Support Lead takes on that role.