The Newcastle Medicine course

Newcastle describes its approach as guided discovery. Staff set out clear learning outcomes and a study guide for each case, and you are expected to take charge of mastering the content rather than waiting to be told everything. The aim of each case is to understand the mechanisms underneath it, not simply to memorise the named condition.

The course starts with more structure because most Year 1 students have just come from school. Less familiar ways of learning are added step by step, and by the clinical years you are expected to be much more independent in your study. Before you arrive, an online MBBS Launch Pad introduces the course structure, key staff, sample learning materials and study skills for the move to university.

From Year 3 the unit of study changes from the case to the placement, each with its own study guide, and some early cases return with added clinical complexity. The course is attendance-based: some material is online, but sessions planned as face-to-face teaching cannot be replaced by online or remote study.

You study anatomy in Years 1 and 2, as one of the formats built into the cases. Year 1 includes sessions in the dissecting room, where you learn from cadavers (bodies donated for medical education) under close supervision from anatomy demonstrators. The anatomy laboratory is licensed by the Human Tissue Authority under the Human Tissue Act 2004, the law that governs the use of donated bodies.

The cadaveric teaching uses prosections: parts of the body that experts have already dissected to show particular structures, so you can study them directly. Alongside these you learn from anatomical models, ultrasound, X-ray and scan images, and body painting, where the outlines of organs and muscles are drawn on the skin to show where they lie beneath it. The anatomy department says it teaches through prosections and, on some of its programmes, full-body dissection.

The department also uses 3D platforms: Complete Anatomy, Virtual Human Dissector and a Sectra terminal, a screen-based system for exploring 3D anatomy and real scan images. These let you explore anatomy in three dimensions and apply it to clinical imaging, a skill you will use throughout clinical practice.

You meet patients from the start of Year 1, and volunteer patients take part in clinical skills teaching. Through the school's Patients as Partners scheme, volunteers let small groups practise examining the chest, abdomen, eyes, ears and joints, and taking a pulse and blood pressure, with a clinically trained tutor always present. Other volunteers talk to groups about their condition and their experience of the NHS, which helps you practise taking a history.

Outside the university, Years 1 and 2 include time in general practice, hospitals and community settings, so each case has a real-life context.

A three-week block called Transition to Clinically Based Practice ends Year 2. It includes simulation, learning alongside students from other healthcare courses, induction for Year 3, and applying your examination skills to patients with real clinical signs.

From Year 3 you are on clinical placements for most of the year. The programme is designed so that your clinical exposure grows in each of the five years.

The MB BS is not split into credit-bearing modules. Each year has a set of assessments, and you must pass every element to move on: a strong result in one area cannot make up for a fail in another. Pass marks for written papers and OSCEs are set for each sitting using recognised standard-setting methods, so they are not published in advance.

Knowledge is tested mainly with single best answer (SBA) questions, where you pick the best of several possible answers, and with short written papers such as the Written Skills Examination (WriSkE). Clinical skill is tested with OSCEs and, in Years 4 and 5, with MOSLERs, where examiners watch you through long encounters, mostly with real patients.

Alongside the exams, clinical staff observe you with patients and give structured feedback, and practical skills such as taking blood and inserting a urinary catheter must be signed off by healthcare professionals. This is recorded in your e-portfolio, an online record of your reflections, achievements and learning needs, and in clinical logbooks that track the experience and skills you build up on placement. Professional behaviour is monitored throughout each year and judged as either acceptable or unacceptable.

Since 2024-25, every UK medical degree must include a pass in the MLA. The Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) is a national written exam with a nationally set pass mark. The Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA) is run by each school to GMC requirements; at Newcastle it is the final-year MOSLER.

When the GMC approved Newcastle's CPSA in May 2024, it had eight 25-minute stations over two days, each with three minutes' reading time. Most used real patients; two used trained actors, one of them an acute care simulation. The AKT was then two computer-based papers of 100 SBA questions, each two hours long, on consecutive days.

• Merit: awarded for each of Years 1 to 4 in which you finish in the top tenth of your year group.
• With Distinction: top tenth in at least three years (two of them from Years 3 to 5), every year passed first time, and good professional standing.
• Honours (with Distinction): top tenth in at least four years, including Years 4 and 5, with the same first-time and professionalism conditions.
• Resits: you normally get two further attempts. The first is in August for Years 1 and 2, July for Years 3 and 4, and April for Year 5.
• If you fail the first resit, you usually repeat the year in person. No more than two repeat years are allowed across the whole course.
• By graduation you must be able to carry out 32 listed practical procedures, from measuring blood pressure to setting up an intravenous drip, urinary catheterisation and skin suturing.

For Years 3 to 5, Newcastle divides its region into three geographical zones and bases you in a different one each year. One year is at sites close to the university, one is commutable from the campus, and in one you may need to live away from Newcastle for up to an academic year. The admissions policy warns that you will spend long periods away from campus and will sometimes work outside normal hours.

The spread is deliberate. The school says its regional medical school covers the North East of England and Cumbria, with clinical learning centres across all the NHS trusts in that area. It needs hospitals across the whole region to provide enough placements. It also wants every student to see rural and urban medicine and to spend time in a tertiary hospital, one that takes specialist referrals from other hospitals.

Each NHS trust has a Local Education Provider (LEP) lead who organises student teaching there. The leads meet regularly during term to keep the experience equal across sites, and a shared student record system lets staff support you while you are based away.

General practice teaching draws on more than 200 GP practices across the North East. It is led by the school's primary care team, whose associate sub-deans cover Tees, Northumbria and Tyne, and Wear. The team says a redesign of the course doubled the time students spend in primary care.

Student choice in the clinical years comes in two forms. The first is two four-week student-selected components (SSCs), one in Year 3 and one in Year 4. You can use them to go deeper into something from the core course or to try a specialty it does not cover, and optional SSC placements give extra time in general practice.

Topics students have chosen for these choice blocks and electives include care of newborn babies, emergency medicine, wilderness medicine, global health, tropical diseases, and paramedic and air ambulance attachments.

The second is the elective: eight weeks in the second semester of Year 5, from January to March. It counts as part of the student-selected side of the degree, and you can go almost anywhere in the world that official UK travel advice considers safe. Destinations have included Australia, Canada, Cambodia, Japan and Thailand, and the school says about 30 per cent of students stay in the UK.

You get a short introduction to electives in Year 3 and plan yours during Year 4, with guidance on health and safety, travel, choosing a destination and specialty, setting objectives, and grants and bursaries. A Medical Elective Handbook, past students' feedback and funding information are available on the MLE.

Intercalating means stepping out of the medical course for a year to study for an extra degree, then returning. At Newcastle it is optional. The school encourages it for motivated students who want research experience, which the main course has limited room for. You can only intercalate after passing the preceding year at the first attempt.

After Year 2, you can take the final year of one of the honours science degrees run by the School of Biomedical Sciences. After Year 4, you can take a postgraduate taught or research programme, such as a master's, in the Faculty of Medical Sciences. Equivalent courses at other universities need the Degree Programme Director's approval.

Some students who intercalate are offered the chance of a PhD. That needs permission for an extended leave of absence and depends on your academic record. You must submit the thesis before rejoining the MB BS, then complete at least a year of formative study and reskilling before final year.

If you do not intercalate, you can still do research through your SSCs, the summer research scholarship scheme, or extra-curricular projects, which usually run in the summer vacation. Within the School of Medicine these projects are in medical education research; for laboratory projects you approach supervisors in the Faculty of Medical Sciences research institutes. Students must be paid for this extra-curricular research work.

Years 1 and 2 are taught mainly in the Medical School on the city campus. It has two 400-seat lecture theatres, a suite of smaller theatres, seminar rooms and computer clusters, some open 24 hours. The Walton Library, the specialist library for the Faculty of Medical Sciences, is in the Catherine Cookson Building within the Medical School.

The Clinical Skills Laboratory, recently refurbished, is where you learn practical skills before using them on wards. These include basic life support and CPR, taking blood, measuring pulses and blood pressure, and examining the eye, ear, breasts, joints, abdomen and chest. The Medical School also has a simulation laboratory.

The Dame Margaret Barbour Building, a short walk from the Medical School, has consultation rooms and space for clinical skills teaching. Anatomy and clinical skills centres with patient simulators are found in Newcastle and elsewhere in the region.

When you start the course you are introduced to two members of staff: an academic mentor and a personal and professional development tutor. Both meet you regularly through the year to give advice and support and to check your progress. Your mentor also goes through your results after assessments and points you to extra help, and the school told the GMC in 2024 that every student meets their mentor after assessments, pass or fail.

Every new student is also paired with a Year 2 student as a peer mentor. The school has a senior student adviser and study skills advisers, and its Medical Student Office handles everything from admission to graduation and can set up meetings with the right staff.

The School of Medicine has its own Student Wellbeing Adviser, whom you can book directly. The university's wider wellbeing service also advises on money, including student loans and NHS bursaries. Occupational health checks when you start can lead to reasonable adjustments to help you meet GMC standards.

In Year 3, the GP who teaches your small group also takes on a pastoral mentoring role, giving you a second point of contact while you are on placement.