The University of Greater Manchester Medicine course

The course is integrated, which means subjects such as anatomy, physiology and pharmacology are not taught as separate courses. Each Year 1 unit takes one topic or body system, such as the cardiovascular system or infection, and teaches it from every angle at once. The school states plainly that this is not a problem-based learning (PBL) course, the style where small groups teach themselves from a patient case with little formal teaching.

The curriculum is also spiral. Sixteen themes drawn from the GMC's Outcomes for Graduates, the standards every new UK doctor must meet, run through all five years. They include prescribing medicines safely, safeguarding vulnerable patients, dealing with complexity and uncertainty, and leadership and teamworking. You return to each theme every year, at a deeper level each time.

In Phase 1 (Years 1 and 2), teaching is mostly on campus: lectures, guest lectures, seminars, tutorials, group work and practical sessions, with some learning online. Year 2 adds more simulation, from paper-based clinical scenarios to mannequins for practical procedures and actors playing patients for consultation practice. Over the summer breaks the school supports you online through Moodle, its virtual learning environment.

In Phase 2 (Years 3 to 5), you learn mainly on the job. Practising clinicians teach each area through bedside teaching, group work and lectures, and workbooks guide what you cover on each placement. Campus teaching continues through induction weeks, university days and simulation. The balance shifts sharply: in Years 1 and 2 half your time is timetabled teaching, but in Years 3 to 5 about 60% is placement, 30% private study and 10% timetabled teaching.

In Years 1 and 2 you have about 24 hours of timetabled teaching a week. The school expects you to spend about the same again on self-directed study, such as background reading, preparing for group work and practical sessions, and revising. A typical Year 1 day contains two lectures and a team-based learning tutorial.

Each of Years 1 and 2 is planned as 1,200 hours of study. Of these, 628 hours are scheduled teaching, 504 are independent study and 68 are clinical placement. Each year is split into two semesters, so Phase 1 runs over four semesters in total.

Anatomy is taught with several tools side by side. The Institute of Medical Sciences has five Anatomage tables: large touchscreen tables showing a 3D digital human body that you can dissect virtually, layer by layer. You also learn from bones, anatomy models and clinical images.

On top of this you study fresh frozen prosections. A prosection is a body, or part of one, that experts have already dissected so the structures are ready to examine. Fresh frozen means it was preserved by freezing rather than with chemicals, so the tissues stay closer to how they look in life. The specimens come from people who donated their bodies to medical education.

The first cohort's first prosection teaching was a two-day programme in February 2026 at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals. Students worked in small groups in a wet lab, a lab where real tissue is handled, on the lower limbs, pelvis and spine. Orthopaedic consultants and the school's anatomy lead ran the sessions, linking each structure to its clinical relevance.

Anatomy continues into Year 2 with a unit on applied head and neck anatomy and an introduction to neuroanatomy, the structure of the brain and nerves. Year 2 ends with the integrated understanding practical assessment (IUPA), ten practical stations of five minutes each. A school news post describes this integrated understanding format as an anatomy practical exam, and the February 2026 prosection sessions included practice at it.

You start by practising communication and examination with simulated patients, who are actors trained to help you learn, and with volunteers. The school then moves you on to real patients early. In Year 1 you have observation visits in general practice and clinical experiences in hospitals and GP practices across Greater Manchester, as part of the Early Clinical Apprenticeship.

Year 1 also includes the NHS Health Care Certificate, which the school treats as a formal part of your early clinical experience. In Year 2 the GP element becomes formal early clinical experience. By the end of Phase 1 you should be able to talk to patients and examine them, and you must pass a formal clinical exam to move on.

Phase 1 also includes community attachments: time in community settings that shows how people's social and psychological circumstances shape their health and illness. They sit alongside your classroom teaching in social and behavioural science.

From Year 3 you work mostly full time in clinical settings. On each placement you join a team caring for patients, so the range of people and illnesses you see reflects what doctors actually deal with. The school describes Bolton and the surrounding area as having a diverse, multicultural population, which is reflected in the patients you meet.

Written exams come at the end of each year and use two formats. Single best answer (SBA) questions give you a scenario and several options, and you pick the best one. Short answer questions (SAQ) ask you to write brief answers of your own. Clinical skills are tested in OSCEs. Across the course you will also meet reflections, presentations and assessment of your practice on placement.

Throughout the course you keep an e-portfolio, a digital record of your skills, reflections, professionalism, future action plans and attendance. In Phase 2 it develops into a tool for assessing your clinical work in the workplace.

The mix changes as you go. In Year 1 the assessment that counts is entirely written. Year 2 has the SBA and SAQ papers, the OSCE, the IUPA practical and a practice portfolio marked pass or fail. Across Years 3 to 5 taken together, practical exams make up 50% of assessment, written exams 40% and coursework 10%.

Pass marks are not a fixed percentage. They are set by standard setting, where examiners decide what a student who only just meets the standard should score. The main method is modified Angoff: a panel estimates how that borderline student would do on each question, and those estimates set the pass mark. For the Year 1 practice OSCE, the descriptor names borderline regression, which works from examiners' overall grades at each station.

To move up a year you must pass that year's exams or their resits, with one resit allowed for each assessment that counts. You must also not have neglected your professionalism or patient safety obligations. Practice assessments come first so you know the format. You are expected to take part in them, but you do not need to pass them.

Every student graduating from a UK medical school must pass the Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA) to join the medical register. It has two parts: the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT), a written exam, and the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA), a practical exam set by each school and quality assured by the GMC. The school says its curriculum prepares you for the MLA from early on. It also offers advice on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) and the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination (MCCQE).

For the first two years you are based at the Institute of Medical Sciences in Bolton, where clinical skills and simulation teaching also take place. Your early clinical experiences happen at partner NHS trusts and GP surgeries around Greater Manchester. From Year 3 most of your time is on placement, with regular days back at the university.

The school's own pages give different numbers of partner hospitals. The summary box on its course pages mentions five North West NHS hospital trusts, but the medical school's home page says four North West NHS hospitals. The programme specification says clinical-year placements are in acute hospital trusts, primary care and mental health trusts.

The course listing describes placements in hospitals, general practice and community settings across Greater Manchester and South Lancashire. So far the one placement trust the school has named is East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT), whose chief executive spoke to the 2026 intake. ELHT's main hospitals are the Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital and Burnley General Teaching Hospital, in East Lancashire.

Placements can involve a lot of travel. You pay your own costs to get to the medical school and to placements, although the school may be able to reimburse mileage for long journeys. With the one named placement trust based in Blackburn and Burnley, build travel into your plans.

General practice teaching is being organised through the Primary Care Academy, announced in September 2026. The proposed model is a network of hubs across the region, each grouping GP practices and community providers under academic GP leadership with its own educator team. You would learn alongside the whole primary care team, and patients and carers would help shape teaching.

An elective is a placement in a location you choose yourself. Here it comes in Year 5, alongside the foundation assistantships, and the school says it could be anywhere in the world.

The Institute of Medical Sciences is a £40 million building in the grounds of the Royal Bolton Hospital in Farnworth. It houses the medical school and the wider Institute of Medicine, and was officially opened in December 2025, the university's 200th anniversary year. Its design team worked with senior clinicians from Bolton NHS Foundation Trust on the layout and equipment.

For simulation there are two high-fidelity suites, rooms that closely recreate real clinical settings and are designed for assessing clinical practice. One can be converted into an operating theatre. A community simulation suite is set up like a home, for practising the kind of care doctors give outside hospital.

Equipment includes a SimMan 3G PLUS, a full-body patient mannequin that can be moved like a real patient and connected to real clinical devices, used to rehearse complex cases. The five Anatomage tables are used for anatomy. At the start of the course the school gives you a tablet or iPad for course materials, a standard stethoscope and access to key textbooks.

Each student has a personal tutor for support and guidance, and there is pastoral support specifically for medical students. The school also offers medicine-specific reasonable adjustments, occupational health, and support through Fitness to Practise, the process that handles concerns about a student's health or conduct. You get feedback on practice assessments as well as on the ones that count.

Because the current intake is international, the school runs a dedicated induction before teaching starts. The first cohort had a three-week induction in 2025, and the 2026 intake a two-week programme. Sessions covered the UK health system and general practice, cultural competence, communication skills, assessments, studying anatomy and wellbeing.

Induction also introduced student networks such as the British International Doctors Association (BIDA) Student Wing and the Medical Women's Federation, for peer support and mentoring. Your own health is built into the curriculum through the Health Enhancement unit in Year 1, part of what the school calls its Health Enhancement Programme.