The Exeter Medicine course

The course is organised around three themes that run through years 1 to 4. Medical Knowledge covers the biomedical, psychological, sociological and population health sciences. Clinical Practice covers history-taking, examination, communication and procedures. Research and Scholarship covers critical thinking and research skills, and is replaced by the elective in the final year. Professional and ethical behaviour, such as reflection, teamwork, consent and giving and receiving feedback, is developed alongside all three.

Years 1 and 2 are campus-based and case-led. Each year has eight three-week study units and two four-week Scholarship blocks. In a study unit, a medical scenario is explored in your PBL group, and lectures, workshops, anatomy and clinical skills sessions, placements and group reflection all connect to it. The Scholarship blocks switch to lectures and workshops on research methods and judging the quality of evidence.

The Scholarship blocks are run as special study units (SSUs): short blocks in which you study one topic in depth and are assessed on it. In year 2, one SSU covers research and the other global and planetary health. Years 3 and 4 also have short SSU blocks between clinical placements.

From year 3 you learn mainly on placement, meeting patients at home, in GP surgeries and in acute and community hospitals. The General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates doctors in the UK, sets the MLA. Exeter's clinical years use MLA Clinical Cases: patient problems worked through with a clinician, backed by video masterclasses and online resources.

The balance shifts sharply over the five years. Year 1 has 40 hours of placement against 484 hours of lectures, tutorials, workshops and practical sessions. Years 3 and 4 each have 392 hours of placement, and the final year has 852.

In years 1 and 2 your weeks follow the three-week study unit. The unit starts from one medical scenario that your PBL group explores. Around it sit lectures, workshops, anatomy sessions in the LSRC, clinical skills practice in the CSRC, placement visits and Professional Development Group sessions, all linked to that case.

Across year 1 you have about 247 hours of seminars and tutorials, 135 hours of lectures, 58 hours of workshops, 44 hours of laboratory and practical sessions and 40 hours on placement. You are also expected to do about 676 hours of guided independent study, more than all the timetabled teaching combined. Year 2 has a very similar mix.

Anatomy is taught in the Life Sciences Resource Centre, using several methods side by side. You learn the structure of the body from medical imaging, including X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. You also study plastinated specimens, which are real body parts preserved with plastic so they can be handled, along with models and computer-based resources.

The centre also teaches with real human bones and the dissection of animal organs. None of the anatomy methods Exeter lists involves dissecting a human body. The centre has a large collection of anatomical models, which you can also use outside taught sessions when it is open.

Living and surface anatomy mean learning where structures lie by looking at and feeling a living body. Clinicians teach the anatomy that matters most in practice. When you feel able, you are also encouraged to take part in peer physical examination, where students carry out non-intimate examinations on each other to understand anatomy and physiology better.

Anatomy does not stop after year 2. The year 3 and 4 academic days include applied anatomy sessions, which link the structures you learned to the patients you are now seeing.

You normally meet your first patient within the first few weeks of year 1. Year 1 placements are meant to give you a broad view of health and healthcare. Some are with doctors, and others are with organisations and people involved in health and social care. You talk with patients about what affects their health and bring what you learn back to your Professional Development Group.

In year 2 every placement is in general practice. Going back to the same practice several times shows you continuity of care and how chronic disease and disability are managed over time. These visits build your clinical and communication skills ready for year 3, and year 2 also contains a two-week Preparation for Clinical Placement block.

Throughout the first two years you rehearse skills in the Clinical Skills Resource Centre before using them on real patients. From year 3 you are on placement most of the time, and in the final year you work as part of the clinical team.

Assessment at Exeter is frequent and spread through the year, so that anyone who is struggling is spotted early and helped quickly. Knowledge is tested mainly through the Applied Medical Knowledge (AMK) test, a multiple-choice exam taken about four times a year. In 2025-26 the sittings fell in October, January, March and May.

The AMK is designed to measure lasting, practical knowledge rather than what you can cram at the last minute. After each test you see your grade and percentage score next to the average for that test. The GMC's 2024 report calls these progress tests, meaning repeated exams that track how your knowledge grows. It also notes that Exeter no longer uses negative marking, where wrong answers lose marks.

Practical skills are tested in OSCEs. They are practice only in year 1. In each of years 2 and 3 you sit three four-station OSCEs that count towards your mark. From year 3 more of your assessment happens on placement, through clinical evaluation exercises, case-based discussions and other workplace tasks, many of them must-pass.

Assessors giving feedback on your professionalism are registered doctors or nurses. Professional behaviour is tracked across the whole course through professional judgement records, which a Professionalism Panel reviews each term. At the end of each year your whole performance is reviewed before you move up.

The MLA has two parts, and Exeter builds both into the course. The practical part, the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA), is sat in year 4. The GMC's 2023 review describes the design used from 2024: a four-station circuit at the end of term 2 and an eight-station circuit at the end of term 3. Stations last 20 minutes with two minutes' reading time, you sit four a day, and the exam runs in both Exeter and Truro.

In the year 4 clinical exam, real patients and simulated patients, people trained to play a patient, take part. The GMC's review said simulated patients did not mark you but could give written feedback, and students who failed a termly OSCE were offered extra clinical skills teaching. The pass mark is set at the level of a doctor starting Foundation Year 1, and you must also pass a minimum number of stations. The resit is 12 stations over two days.

• The written part of the MLA, the AKT, is set nationally through the Medical Schools Council and replaced Exeter's own final-year knowledge tests. It is two computer-based papers of 100 questions, two hours each, on consecutive days. In 2025-26 final-year students sat it on 4 and 5 March.
• The AKT uses single best answer questions, which give you a short clinical scenario and a list of options from which you pick the one best answer.
• Final-year students are signed up to the national exam platform in the autumn of year 5 so they can sit a practice paper before the real AKT.
• Final-year students also sit the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA), which the GMC's 2024 report lists among Exeter's final-year assessments. The PSA is a national online exam on prescribing medicines safely, and you must pass it to complete your first foundation year. In 2025-26 it fell on 29 January.

Placements are with NHS organisations across Devon and Cornwall, in coastal, rural and urban settings. Year 1 is based at St Luke's Campus, a short walk from Exeter city centre and close to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, and its placements are in the community. From year 2 you may be based either at St Luke's or at the Knowledge Spa in Truro. All year 2 placements are in general practice.

In years 3 and 4 you are based either at the Royal Devon and Exeter site in Exeter or at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals site in Truro. From there you rotate through hospital and community placements across Devon or Cornwall. Final-year bases are Exeter, Truro, Barnstaple or Torbay, and the final year can take you to placements across the South West and beyond.

Every student spends at least one year, and no more than two, based at the Knowledge Spa in Truro, and you must move to Cornwall for that time. Your campus rotation is given to you after you enrol on the course.

In Cornwall, some medical students live on the Penryn Campus near Falmouth and others in Truro. Students based in Truro can use Penryn's social and support facilities. The Knowledge Spa sits on the edge of the Royal Cornwall Hospital (Treliske) site, a 25 to 30 minute walk or 10 to 15 minutes by bike from Truro station. Several buses stop at the hospital, and on-site parking is paid and busy, so the Langarth Park and Ride is the easier option by car.

Getting to placements can cost you money, and Exeter warns of travel costs in every year of the course. From year 3 the medical school's travel policy offers financial support, and in the final year travel to and from placement is refunded in line with that policy.

The main elective comes in the final year: a six-week period that you choose and arrange yourself. It can be clinical, research-based or a mix of both, in the UK or anywhere in the world. Some students go to low- and middle-income countries to see care in mission or government hospitals, while others stay in the South West or elsewhere in the UK. Your plan needs agreed learning objectives and must pass clinical and health and safety risk assessments.

Choice appears earlier too. In the Research and Scholarship strand you pick an area to study in depth within each year's theme. The themes are research and global and planetary health in year 2, education and leadership in year 3, and the medical humanities in year 4.

Exeter also has a link with Wollega Medical School in Ethiopia. Its international placements information, parts of which predate the current course, describes several two-week placements a year there for year 3 and 4 students. They combine clinical experience with helping to teach Wollega's own medical students.

Outside the timetable, Exeter runs the local branch of INSPIRE, a national Academy of Medical Sciences scheme that introduces students to research, together with Bristol, Cardiff and Plymouth. It offers half-day research taster visits, usually on Wednesday afternoons from late November to the end of January, with travel between Truro and Exeter refundable. Funded summer research studentships of up to four weeks were open to Exeter students in years 1 to 4 in the 2025 round.

Intercalating means taking a year out of medicine to complete a separate degree, which adds a year to the course. At Exeter it is optional and taken between years 3 and 4. You either study 120 credits from another bachelor's degree, usually its final year, or a one-year master's degree.

Places go to the highest-performing students on year 3 assessments. Roughly the top quarter of the year receive an automatic offer, and the second quarter compete for any remaining places. A small number can apply to intercalate elsewhere in a subject Exeter does not offer, for example at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The Exeter options below are subject to availability. Conservation Biology, Evolutionary Biology and Zoology are taught at the university's Cornwall campus; the others are taught in Exeter.

• BSc options: Biological Sciences, Biomedical Sciences, Conservation Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Exercise and Sports Science, Infectious Disease, Molecular and Cellular Science, Neuroscience, Psychological Studies and Zoology.
• Master's options: MSc Bioarchaeology, Clinical Education, Environment and Human Health, Extreme Medicine, Genomic Medicine, Global Healthcare Management, Health Data Science, Health Research Methods, Sports and Exercise Medicine, and the Master of Public Health (MPH).

At St Luke's Campus in Exeter the medical school has the Life Sciences Resource Centre, a Medical Imaging suite and a Medical Sciences Laboratory. The Exeter Clinical Skills Resource Centre, with its electronic patient simulators and mock wards and emergency departments, is on the Heavitree Hospital site.

The Research, Innovation, Learning and Development (RILD) building is on the Wonford hospital site, close to St Luke's. It is a partnership between the university and the local NHS trust, which has since become part of Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. It houses the Postgraduate Education Centre, the Wellcome Wolfson Medical Research Centre and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Exeter Clinical Research Facility.

In Truro, the Knowledge Spa gives medical students a lecture theatre, seminar rooms, a common room, the Cornwall Health Library, a second Life Sciences Resource Centre and the Constance Fozzard Clinical Skills Suite. The building is also the Cornwall base for the University of Plymouth's Peninsula School of Dentistry and its nursing school.

Every student has an academic tutor who oversees academic progress and personal and professional development, and who is your first point of contact for academic support. You change tutor each year. In the final year a personal Educational Supervisor supports you on placement and helps you think about your career.

Your assessment results are reviewed every term so that problems are spotted early. If you need help, you are referred to trained staff and receive a confidential report with advice on study techniques, assessment strategies and your approach to work. Students who are not ready to progress may be asked to repeat a year, and you are given chances to reflect and improve before anyone is asked to leave on academic grounds.

Professional Development Groups in years 1 to 4 give you a regular small-group space to talk through placement experiences. The GMC's 2024 report says students who fail the AKT are offered support, including from a Progress Support Team. Careers sessions and events are run with the regional NHS body that oversees doctors' training in the South West. If you are interested in a research career, the INSPIRE team may be able to help you find a local clinical academic to mentor you.