The Cardiff Medicine course

In Years 1 and 2 the main teaching method is case-centred team-based learning, shortened to cTBL. You work through a series of patient cases, each lasting about two weeks. You learn in a small team that sits inside a larger group, with trained academic facilitators checking you are on track. In Year 2 the teams widen to include more of your year group.

Around the cases sit lectures, seminars, practical classes such as dissection, lab sessions and clinical skills teaching. Science is taught in partnership with the School of Biosciences. Some sessions are shared with students on other health courses, including pharmacy, optometry and speech and language therapy, so you see how the wider healthcare team works.

From Year 3 the balance changes. You spend most of your time in outpatient clinics, on wards and in general practice, taught by hospital doctors, GPs and clinical skills tutors. Time back in Cardiff is used to revisit the science, with more focus on how disease develops, how it is diagnosed and how it is treated.

Self-directed learning, meaning study you plan and do yourself, runs through the whole course and grows each year. By Year 5 most learning happens on the job, supported by simulation sessions and small-group work on clinical thinking and decision-making.

If you speak Welsh or want to learn, you can work with Welsh-speaking and Welsh-language tutors, and with Welsh-speaking supervisors on some placements where possible. You can sit some exams and written assessments in Welsh, and where possible do group assessments with other Welsh-speaking students. Some student residences are set aside for Welsh speakers and learners.

In Years 1 and 2 your week is shaped by the case your team is working on, which usually runs for about a fortnight. Cardiff's own example is an athlete with a knee injury. Lectures cover inflammation and anti-inflammatory medicines, and in the Anatomy Centre you explore the knee joint and its muscles through dissection and other methods.

In clinical skills sessions you learn how to examine a knee, and on placement you may sit in a clinic that deals with sports injuries. In Year 1 most weeks also include a patient-contact day, described below. Team sessions, lectures, skills teaching and your own study fill the rest of the timetable.

You study anatomy at the Anatomy Centre on Cathays Campus, in small groups led by clinical anatomists, academics and clinical demonstrators from the School of Biosciences. The basics come in the 12-week introduction at the start of Year 1, and after that anatomy follows the case or body system your team is working on.

Several methods are used side by side. In dissection you carefully cut through a donated body yourself to expose its structures. In prosection you study body parts that experts have already dissected. Body painting means drawing structures onto the skin of a living person, such as a classmate, to learn where organs and muscles sit. E-learning and video tutorials support all of these.

Virtual reality and the immersive projection room described above are also used for anatomy. Anatomy exams are part of the assessment programme.

You meet patients in your first year. On most weeks of Year 1 you spend a day in local hospitals, GP practices or other community services around south east Wales. The patients you meet have conditions that match your current case, and you also meet the NHS staff who care for them.

In Year 2 the Community Clinical Learning programme continues this, with a set task for each placement. You build a portfolio of what you have seen, linking real people to your cases and to wider goals such as professional behaviour and how health services are run.

Years 3 and 4 are mostly clinical. You follow patients along their care pathway, from the community into hospital and back out again. On placement you talk to and examine patients, record what you find and practise skills first learned in simulation. You present cases to senior staff and join weekly case discussions with the multidisciplinary team, meaning all the professions involved in a patient's care.

You are assessed in many ways: anatomy exams, progress tests, short answer papers, coursework, placement feedback, practical clinical exams and end-of-unit quizzes. Formative assessments are practice that shows you how you are doing, while summative ones must be passed to progress. Written reports and oral presentations must reach a satisfactory standard too. On placement, supervisors also assess you through observed encounters and a practical skills log, and a professionalism panel monitors your conduct throughout.

From Year 2 to Year 5 you sit progress tests of 125 SBA questions, written to mirror the format of the Applied Knowledge Test described below. Every assessment except the progress tests in Years 2 to 4 allows up to three attempts in total, with no more than two in one academic year.

The student booklet for 2022-23 described the Year 2 ISCE as six 15-minute stations. Each station combined several tasks: talking to or examining a real or simulated patient, a practical procedure, interpreting simple data such as X-rays or ECGs (heart tracings), and questions on diagnosis. A formative ISCE came first, and an online virtual ISCE let you rehearse.

Since the 2024-25 academic year, a UK medical degree must include a pass in the Medical Licensing Assessment to count as a primary medical qualification, the degree that lets you register as a doctor. The clinical half is your Year 4 ISCE, which the GMC approved as the CPSA in November 2023. The written half, the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT), takes the place of one of your Year 5 progress tests.

The CPSA has eight 15-minute stations with four minutes of reading time, sat in one session. You must pass at least six, at the standard of a new Foundation Year 1 (F1) doctor. Simulated patients include actors with intellectual disabilities and, for child health stations, local GCSE drama students trained in role play. Resits use the same format with different stations.

For the AKT, Cardiff uses the Medical Schools Council's shared version, which the GMC approved for Cardiff in June 2024. You sit it in late January or early February of Year 5, with a first resit in May. It has two computer-based papers of 100 SBA questions, each two hours long, on consecutive days. The Prescribing Safety Assessment, also in Year 5, must be passed to graduate.

Clinical placements are run by the NHS health boards across Wales, in hospitals, community medical centres and more than 230 general practices. In Years 1 and 2 they are in south east Wales. In Years 3 and 4 you go further afield on blocks of seven or eight weeks, each starting and ending with a week of university-led teaching at Heath Park or University Hospital Llandough. The final-year placements are the Junior Student Assistantship, the Primary Care Attachment and the Senior Student Assistantship.

Cardiff describes the range as running from inner-city deprivation to farm-related illness. You may work in holiday resorts, quiet country communities and post-industrial towns, as well as in large urban teaching hospitals. Some blocks mean living away from home for a while.

You pay for your own transport to some local placements, and the university provides accommodation for placements further away from south Wales. You also need your own stethoscope and Cardiff University branded scrubs, the loose uniform worn in clinical areas, for all five years.

The CCPY, which you apply for in Year 2, is a longitudinal integrated clerkship: instead of rotating through blocks, you stay with the same patients, supervisors and team all year. Your weeks mix two days in general practice with a fortnightly community clinic, teaching sessions, self-study and SSC project work. It is run with Monmouthshire County Council, local practices and community organisations. It builds on CARER (the Community and Rural Education Route), a year-long GP clerkship Cardiff ran from 2018 to summer 2026.

Student Selected Components run in every year of the course. You can pick a project proposed by a tutor or design your own, choosing the specialty, the location and the tutor. Projects can take place anywhere in Wales and range from clinical research and basic science to the links between the arts and health.

Almost any activity with a medical element can count. Cardiff mentions students who have worked with organisations for homeless people to see how common illnesses are managed, spent time at military bases, or built e-learning modules for students elsewhere.

The elective is the final SSC, an eight-week placement in Year 5 that can be almost anywhere in the world. You choose the country, the institution, the specialty and the tutor. Cardiff has links with universities in Europe and Asia, and you can apply for places at partner institutions in Year 4, which leaves time to plan.

You pay for your own elective. The school has staff who help you organise it and can point you towards bursaries. Costs vary widely, because you could spend the elective in Cardiff or on another continent.

Intercalating means pausing your medical degree for a year to take a separate degree in a related subject, then returning to the MBBCh. At Cardiff it is optional and happens after Year 3 or Year 4. About 100 Cardiff medical students can intercalate each year, graduating with a BSc or MSc as well as the MBBCh.

Current options at Cardiff include BScs in Emergency, Pre-hospital and Immediate Care (EPIC), Psychology and Medicine, Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences. MSc options include Applied and Experimental Clinical Immunology, Applied Bioinformatics, Medical Education, Neuroscience, and Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. The list has changed from one year's course page to the next, and the school will also help you arrange a place at another university.

The EPIC BSc shows what a year can involve. Modules cover pre-hospital and sports emergencies, emergency diagnostics, resuscitation science, trauma science and paediatric emergency medicine, plus a research project. Placements are in emergency departments across Wales, with weekly time out with the Welsh Ambulance Service in an ambulance or rapid response vehicle.

The Cochrane Medical Education Centre at Heath Park is the home of medical education. It houses the Clinical Skills Centre, the Simulation Centre, a library, seminar rooms and student support services, and it is shared with students on other healthcare courses. Heath Park also has a common room and a students' union hub and cafe, nicknamed the IV Lounge.

The Clinical Skills Centre is where you learn physical examination and the practical procedures that the GMC requires every new doctor to perform safely. The GMC's current list, published in 2019, has 23 of them. Rooms with audiovisual equipment are used for everything from communication skills to basic life support. After timetabled sessions you can keep practising in a self-directed learning area.

The Simulation Centre has four teaching rooms and four simulation rooms. The simulation rooms hold adult patient manikins in a space set up like a real clinical area, and cameras let classmates watch your scenario live and let you replay it afterwards.

For whole-year teaching, the school's large lecture theatres can hold more than 400 students at a time.

You are given a personal tutor who meets you regularly and is your first contact for academic worries, and who can also advise on personal and wellbeing issues. Cardiff recommends meeting at least once a semester. You also keep a personal development plan, a record where you reflect on your abilities and progress.

My MEDIC is a confidential support service just for School of Medicine students. It helps with things like exam anxiety, study skills, stress, low mood, motivation and problems at home or in relationships. You can refer yourself through an online form, or a tutor or year director can refer you with your consent.

On placement, support staff are based at each district hospital in Wales. At each hospital an Honorary Senior Lecturer, a senior clinician, is responsible for teaching quality, and undergraduate managers handle day-to-day organisation. You also have a named educational supervisor.

After exams you get your marks alongside the cohort's results, and clinical exams add station marks, feedback by skill area and examiner comments. If you fail, you can meet staff for feedback and use remediation group sessions, podcasts and an online tool. The GMC's 2024 report also describes a near-peer scheme pairing Year 3 students with Year 5 mentors.