The North Wales (Bangor) Medicine course

Your main teaching method is case-based learning. In a small group you work through a patient scenario with a facilitator, and the case decides what you study. Early cases are the problems doctors see most, such as a sports injury, a mental health problem or abdominal pain. For each one you look at the anatomy, the physiology and the social side, practise the relevant clinical skills and gain linked experience on short placements.

The course is non-modular. Each year is a single 120-credit core module rather than a set of separate subjects, so science and clinical medicine are taught together and examined together. Instead of finishing one subject and moving on, you keep returning to topics as new cases bring them up.

The balance shifts as you go. In Years 1 and 2 your learning is built around CBL, with lectures and clinical skills sessions alongside it. Placements start after Christmas in Year 1 and become one day a week in Year 2. Year 3 is spent in general practice, as described in the year-by-year section.

Year 4 is built around specialist placements and a six-week Student Selected Component (SSC), a project on a topic you choose. In Year 5 most of your learning happens on placement, with simulation and small-group sessions alongside.

Anatomy is part of the introductory science weeks in Year 1. After that it comes back in every case you study, because each CBL case asks you to work out the anatomy involved. The course lists interactive anatomy demonstrations among its teaching formats.

Teaching is supported by the North Wales Centre for Human Anatomy in the Brigantia Building, which serves the Medicine BMBS course. The centre teaches through interactive tutorials using cadaveric material, meaning preserved human specimens. It also uses prosections: specimens that experts have already dissected to show particular structures clearly.

Alongside the real specimens you use 3D physical models, virtual and augmented reality, glasses-free 3D screens, apps and an Anatomage table. This is a life-size touchscreen showing a digital human body that you can cut through layer by layer. The Welsh Government listed electronic dissection tables among the new school's anatomy facilities when it described them in November 2023.

You meet patients early. In Year 1 your first placement comes after Christmas: a day at a GP practice or with another health profession. CBL cases are also linked to short placements, so what you see on placement matches what you are studying.

In Year 2 placements become regular. After a settling-in period at the start of term, you spend one day a week on placement in what the course calls Community-Based Learning. You build a portfolio of clinical experiences, meet patients in different settings and see how health services are organised.

In Year 3 you look after your own list of patients in general practice for the whole year. Years 4 and 5 then move you into specialist placements and emergency medicine, with growing responsibility for patients, always under supervision.

Assessment follows the same non-modular idea as the teaching. Rather than sitting an anatomy exam and then a separate exam on pain, you are tested on how topics connect, sometimes within one question. The course also uses reflective writing, essays, logs of your clinical skills and regular contact with doctors and academics, and Bangor says you get detailed feedback on all of these.

Written exams use online multiple-choice questions, extended matching questions and short answer questions. In an extended matching question you pick the best answer for several clinical scenarios from one long list of options. Progress tests are held three times a year in Years 2 and 3 and continue in Year 4. Because you sit the same kind of test again and again, your scores show how your knowledge grows over the course.

Practical skills are examined in ISCEs, first in Year 2 and again in Year 4. On placement, supervisors assess you at work, and you keep a reflective portfolio and a record of your skills. Teachers and peers also observe you. Your SSCs and professional behaviour are assessed every year.

Students graduating from UK medical schools from 2024-25 onwards must pass the MLA before they can join the GMC's register. It has two parts: the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT), a written exam set centrally for all UK schools, and the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA), a practical exam. Bangor says its Year 4 ISCE forms part of the MLA and that you sit the AKT in Year 5, alongside the Prescribing Safety Assessment, a national online exam on safe prescribing.

Placements take place across North Wales, run with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and GP and other primary care providers. The health board is the NHS body for Anglesey, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham. Bangor describes a wide spread of settings: seaside and holiday towns, small towns and rural villages, suburbs and cities, areas of deprivation, former industrial communities and hospitals.

All placements are agreed in advance by the medical school. Because they are spread across the region, your home campus may switch from Bangor to Wrexham, about 70 miles away, from Year 3 onwards to make travel easier. You are told alongside your placement allocation. One of Bangor's applicant pages says the switch can come from Year 2, so ask at an applicant day if the timing matters to you. Travel to placements is one of the costs not covered by tuition fees.

Where you go changes by year. Year 1 and 2 placements are single days: a GP or other health setting in Year 1, then a weekly community-based day in Year 2. Year 3 places you in one partner GP practice in North Wales for the year. In Year 4 the emergency placement is in one of the three district general hospitals, and the women and children placement can take you to specialists anywhere in Wales. In Year 5 the assistantship follows your first job, if that job is in Wales.

The health board's North Wales Medical Education Department looks after medical students on its sites. In 2024/25, before this course's first students reached the clinical years, it mentored 241 medical students in Years 3 to 5. It also ran an On Call Survival session for final-year students on prescribing, carrying a bleep and working out of hours.

Student Selected Components make up 15% of the course. They let you choose what you study and learn through your own research, and the amount of choice grows each year. In Year 1 you may choose the topic of a literature review. Year 2 has another SSC, and past SSC projects have included mountain medicine. Year 4 includes a six-week SSC project.

The last SSC is the elective in Year 5: eight weeks studying an area of medicine that interests you. It can take place almost anywhere in the world, and Bangor says it is supported by medical and scientific centres in many countries.

The medical school is based in the Brigantia Building on the Bangor campus, which also houses the North Wales Centre for Human Anatomy. Clinical skills are taught in the Simulation and Skills Centre. It includes a virtual reality room where you rehearse rare but urgent clinical problems in immersive scenarios, so you can practise them safely before you meet them for real.

When the Welsh Government described the new school's facilities in November 2023, it named the Brigantia Building and the Fron Heulog Medical and Healthcare simulation suite as the places students would train.

When the GMC reviewed the school in 2024/25, including a visit in March 2025, it found good progress but noted delays to refurbishing the building planned for the medical school. The school said extra rooms in the Brigantia Building would cover 2025/26, and the GMC said the longer-term space plans urgently needed certainty.

In the same review the GMC asked the school to keep up staff recruitment so there are no gaps in teaching. The GMC planned another visit for early 2026, but its summary of that year had not been published by September 2026, so check the GMC's new schools reports page for the latest.

Every student has a personal academic tutor. You meet several times a year to talk about your studies, your wellbeing and life at university. Welsh speakers can have a Welsh-speaking personal tutor.

Help also comes from other students. Peer Guides, current students trained to help newcomers, run social events and show you around when you arrive. The medical school runs medic families, which pair you with medic parents in the year above, and Bangor MedSoc is the society for medical students.

The school has a lead for medical student wellbeing, a psychiatrist by background. The lead has built a health and wellbeing strand that runs through all five years, teaching skills such as managing stress and handling difficult situations. On intense days such as the rural simulation, there is a quiet breakout space with support on hand.

The GMC's 2024/25 review welcomed the school's plans to give weight to student voice and mental wellbeing. It also set an area for focus on adjustments for disabled students. The school had said its own disability tutor would be involved in decisions about adjustments linked to the competence standards every doctor must meet. The GMC recommended that the school clearly confirm the role of people with clinical experience, who must make any decision that could affect patient safety.