The Norwich (UEA) Medicine course

In Years 1 to 3, each module covers one or two body systems and teaches the science, clinical skills and social side of medicine together. In Year 1, for example, you study the anatomy of bones, joints and muscles alongside biochemistry, physiology, genetics, pathology, psychology, public health, sociology, ethics, law, health economics, and diet and health. You start communication skills at the same time and use all of it on placement.

Small-group case work is central, and UEA uses both problem-based and case-based learning. The James Paget University Hospitals trust, a partner in the medical school, describes the degree as structured on PBL, with lectures, seminars and whole-class discussions supporting the groups.

The balance shifts as you go. Early modules alternate campus weeks with hospital blocks, Year 4 moves into specialties such as paediatrics and mental health, and Year 5 is mostly spent on placement. Research and reflection run throughout: you learn how medical research works and how to reflect on your own practice as a doctor.

A campus-based week mixes group learning on cases, lectures and seminars, with time for independent study. Regular consultation skills classes and anatomy practicals run through these weeks. One day of each campus week you are out in a GP surgery. Campus weeks alternate with blocks of hospital placement.

Some modules have a set week-by-week shape. Year 4's Continuing, Supportive and Cancer Care module starts with an introductory week on campus. Then come three weeks in general practice, and one week each in older people's medicine, oncology (cancer medicine) and palliative care (care for people nearing the end of life). A final week is kept for reflection and review.

You learn anatomy through dissection classes on human specimens and on models, so you understand both how the body is built and how it works. The classes take place in the Anatomy Suite. It is licensed by the Human Tissue Authority, the national regulator for the use of human tissue, to receive, store and examine human remains under the Human Tissue Act 2004.

UEA's description of its current suite, in the Queen's Building on campus, gives a picture of the teaching materials. There are eleven embalmed cadavers: bodies that people have left to medical education, preserved so they can be dissected or used for demonstration. There is also a large collection of prosections, which are specimens already dissected by experts to show particular structures clearly.

Alongside these you use more than 200 anatomical models, digital x-rays of normal and diseased anatomy, and real and plastic bones. A live camera feed puts close-up detail on eight large screens, so a whole group can follow a demonstration. The teaching laboratory holds up to 90 students, and you may be taught in small or large groups, with tablets to support your learning.

The suite is moving. UEA is building a new one as an extension of the Edith Cavell Building on the Norwich Research Park, next to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. In 2024 the university said the new suite would be in use during 2026, with more teaching space. The move also lets the school meet newer safety rules on formaldehyde, the chemical used to preserve bodies, which UEA said the Queen's Building could not meet from 2024.

Anatomy follows the module you are in. Year 1 covers the clinical anatomy of the musculoskeletal system. It comes back later: in Year 3, neurology teaching includes neuroanatomy such as the motor and sensory pathways and the cranial nerves, and the kidney module covers how the urinary tract forms before birth. Anatomy is also one of the themes you can choose for a student selected component.

Placements in both general practice and hospital start in Year 1, and you are in a GP surgery within your first month. Hospital care is often called secondary care. Year 1 is partly about getting used to clinical settings, learning how to learn from patients and starting to assess them yourself.

Contact grows from there. Each body-system module in Years 2 and 3 repeats the pattern of GP days and hospital blocks, and some go further, such as the rehabilitation centres used in the stroke module. In Year 4 you spend three weeks in general practice following patients over a longer period. By Year 5 you work as part of hospital teams, including in emergency departments, intensive care units and operating theatres.

You are assessed at regular points throughout the course. Formative assessments tell you how you are doing, while summative assessments are pass or fail. Methods include written exams and written work, assessments of your clinical skills on placement, professionalism assessments and OSCEs.

The GMC approved UEA's final exams in December 2023 (from a 2022 submission) and June 2024, and its reports describe the wider system at that time. Each year ended with an applied knowledge exam including single best answer (SBA) questions, where you pick the best of several options. Some came from a bank UK medical schools share through the Medical Schools Council (MSC). Each exam tested new and earlier topics, with an extra progression hurdle before the last two years.

Since 2024-25, every UK medical degree has had to include a pass in the Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA), often called the UKMLA. It has two parts. The Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) is a national written exam set through the MSC. The Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA) is a practical exam each school runs to GMC requirements.

The GMC found both of UEA's versions compliant. At that time the AKT was two computer-based papers of 100 SBA questions, two hours each, on consecutive days, and UEA's final-year knowledge exam had used that format since 2014-15. UEA aligns all its exams to the MLA, so the final exams should not feel different.

The CPSA was the finals OSCE: 18 stations over three days, six a day, each eight minutes long with a minute and a half of reading time. To pass you needed the overall pass mark and at least 12 of the 18 stations. Examiners marked with checklists.

In UEA's submission to the GMC, other assessments ran alongside the OSCE. Practical procedures were signed off on real patients during placements. In the final two years students also completed three case-based discussions, structured talks with a senior doctor about a patient they had looked after. You are supported to take the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA), a national assessment of safe prescribing.

About half of the course is spent on placement. Settings include hospitals, GP surgeries, community services, social services, and voluntary or private organisations. Placements are usually allocated across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. UEA says every placement is within an hour and a half of campus, and it offers residential accommodation for some placements so you do not have to travel each day.

The school has links with five hospitals. The closest is the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, about 100 metres from the medical school. Another long-standing teaching site is the James Paget University Hospital in Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth, which has its own OSCE lead and holds OSCEs several times a year.

In the final year you can ask for particular specialties and hospitals for the Student Assistantship, but the school cannot always meet requests. If you need to resit finals, your career development placement is replaced by a placement at the Norfolk and Norwich or the James Paget, with revision tutorials.

Student selected components (SSCs) let you study a topic you choose, in Years 1, 3 and 4. They build skills in reviewing research, critical thinking, presenting and teaching, and forming a clinical or research question. In Year 3 you pick themes through an online sign-up at the start of the year, and the school aims to give you your first or second choice.

Two optional programmes add breadth. In Year 2 you can join the Medical Humanities programme, with choices such as the history of medicine, philosophy and the doctor in society. In Year 4 you can follow an integrated programme that develops your teaching skills as a clinical educator.

The External Elective (Module 4E) takes place in the summer of Year 4. It is your chance to see medicine in a setting different from Norwich and its hospitals, and you plan and organise it yourself. It can be anywhere in the world, provided the risk is not excessive. Judging that risk is part of the learning, and tutors help. Lectures and seminars cover preparation, staying healthy, global public health and resilience.

An elective can be clinical, meaning a new specialty or a familiar one in a different service, place or culture. It can be research-based, such as a community project, a survey of disease patterns in a population or a lab study. Or it can be a service development internship in the management, education or strategy side of a health system. Many students go overseas.

The Career Development Placement (Module 5C) follows final exams in Year 5. It lasts six weeks, is mostly clinical, and lets you explore or strengthen part of your future career, which may help in your first foundation job or in specialty applications. You can spend up to half of it on research, management, or patient safety and effectiveness.

Intercalating means taking a year out of the medicine course to complete another qualification. At UEA it is optional, and the qualification is a Master's degree. It usually happens between Years 3 and 4, or between Years 4 and 5. The school says this timing leaves you enough time, once you return, to prepare for your final exams.

As a current UEA student you need the school's formal permission, called a concession, to intercalate. You must be in good academic standing, having passed all your assessments, and have no outstanding fitness to practise issues, meaning unresolved concerns about your professional conduct or your ability to practise safely. During the Master's year you are registered as a postgraduate student, not an MBBS student.

You can keep your clinical skills going during the year. UEA lets intercalating students arrange optional clinical time at the Norfolk and Norwich with a consultant who agrees to supervise them. It can be taken as a block or in smaller slots, such as one afternoon a week, fitted around your Master's teaching.

UEA lists four Master's routes for intercalating students. For the research route, it publishes a research directory and a 360-degree virtual tour in which past intercalating students and supervisors talk about their work.

• MRes (Master of Research) in Clinical Science: training in how to carry out clinical research in an ethical way that keeps patients at the centre
• Master's in Clinical Education: for students who want to develop as teachers and leaders in health education
• Master's in Cognitive Neuroscience: research methods for studying how the brain works normally and in illness
• MSc (Master of Science) in Molecular Medicine: genetics and biotechnology used to understand disease at the level of cells

Norwich Medical School runs the Anatomy Suite and the Norwich Clinical Trials Unit. It also has rooms purpose-built for problem-based learning groups.

The Bob Champion Research and Education Building, which cost £19 million, has laboratories and teaching rooms laid out like working hospital bays for training doctors. It also holds a bio-bank that stores DNA and tissue samples for research.

In UEA's 2022 submission, approved by the GMC in December 2023, the finals OSCE was held in an area designed for clinical skills teaching and assessment. It had simulated ward areas of up to six cubicles each, separated by standard NHS curtains. UEA also told the GMC that it uses real medicines in teaching and assessment, overseen by a senior teaching nurse and a senior teaching pharmacist.

At the James Paget, the Education and Training Centre, opened in January 2006, is the medical school's base on that site. The trust added the Burrage Centre in 2013, with conference, research and library space.

Every medical student has a personal advisor, who supports you academically and personally throughout the degree. A Senior Advisor and a wellbeing team back up your personal advisor, and you can contact the Senior Advisor directly with questions about support, including adjustments for clinical exams.

The school considers requests for adjustments under the Equality Act 2010, and asks offer holders with a current or past health condition to tell occupational health early so support can be arranged. A health condition or disability is not in itself a fitness to practise concern. In the OSCE arrangements the GMC approved in 2023, a yellow card system let disabled students apply an adjustment only when they needed it.

Students get regular chances to be heard. When the GMC approved UEA's knowledge exam in June 2024, UEA described a student-led forum each term, where students could put questions to senior staff, with the minutes shared with everyone. Each year the course director and year leads also gave every year group a course update.

When the GMC approved UEA's finals OSCE in 2023, it singled out a mock OSCE that junior doctors ran in the finals venue before finals. At that time, a failed exam led to advice or results clinics with senior staff and revision support aimed at your weaker areas.