The Oxford Medicine course

In years 1 to 3 you learn through lectures, practical classes and college tutorials. Lectures take up to 200 students, while classes and seminars usually have between 10 and 50. Teaching comes from university academics, research staff and NHS clinicians, usually consultants, with some classes taken by doctoral students.

For each body system you learn structure and development alongside physiology and pharmacology, and you study scientific method, experimental technique and how to read data. In the Final Honour School you work mainly from original research papers and test your own ideas against published results.

From year 4 most teaching comes from clinicians at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, local GPs and university staff. Weeks mix structured teaching, supervised work with patients and self-directed study. A core curriculum prepares everyone for Foundation training, and student-selected components, parts where you pick the topic, let you follow your interests.

Patients and carers, known as Patient Experience Partners, help teach, give students feedback and sit on school committees. The school is also building education for sustainable healthcare, meaning care that is good for patients without harming the environment, into every stage.

During the First BM, lectures and practicals take up roughly half your time. The rest goes on tutorial preparation, private study and life outside the course. Oxford expects at least 40 hours a week of academic work in term, and pre-clinical terms are eight weeks long.

In the Final Honour School there are few lectures. Your weeks centre on your research project, reading papers and preparing for tutorials and seminars.

Clinical weeks depend on the block. On the year 5 community block, three days a week are spent in a GP surgery seeing patients under supervision and two in the university's primary care department.

Oxford does not teach anatomy by having students dissect a body. You learn from prosections: parts of donated bodies that staff and surgeons from nearby hospitals have already dissected, so the structures are laid out ready to study.

Two other methods sit alongside the specimens. In living anatomy classes you and your classmates act as the subjects, exploring how the body's structures work in a living person. Computer-assisted exercises let you work through anatomy on screen.

The specimens come from the anatomy department's body donation programme, regulated by the Human Tissue Authority. Classes run in the department's Demonstration Room, led by medical tutors, researchers, anatomy prosectors and clinicians, and also use imaging and microscope slides.

Your first patients come in year 1 through the Learning with Patients course. GP tutors host you in their practices, where you talk with patients about their conditions and how illness affects their lives. There are currently five sessions in year 1 and four in year 2, on themes such as heart disease, diabetes and mental health.

In year 3, Learning with Patients 3 lets you follow the same patient or patients through the year, supervised by a GP tutor, with a seminar each term. It is optional at present but is due to become compulsory for all third-years from 2027.

Year 4 puts patients at the centre. It opens with introductory weeks covering basic life support, clinical skills, ethics and law, and communication. A two-week GP placement follows, where you practise with real patients and visit someone at home. By year 5 you run consultations yourself, still supervised.

Part I of the First BM has one exam for each of its four courses, and Part II has one per course plus the synoptic paper. Learning with Patients, practical work and statistics must also be certified as satisfactory. If you fail some units you normally get one further attempt at just those.

The Final Honour School is assessed by three written papers covering themes from at least two options, plus synoptic questions and the critical reading of published research. Your project, its oral presentation and your submitted essay are also assessed. You must pass both parts of the First BM, the FHS and the Principles of Clinical Anatomy examination to start clinical training.

In the clinical years you must pass written and clinical exams and be judged satisfactory on every rotation. Coursework includes posters, essays and logbooks. The GMC's 2024 report adds that you must perform every procedure on the national MLA list on real patients, observed and signed off in an electronic logbook.

The MLA has two parts. The Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) is a multiple-choice exam written nationally and delivered by each medical school. The Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA) is a clinical exam each school runs to GMC standards. At Oxford the AKT is your year 6 written paper, and the year 5 and year 6 OSCEs together make up the CPSA.

You have 49 months to finish both MLA parts, counted from 1 June of the year you are due to sit the year 5 OSCE. Anyone who runs past that takes extra remedial assessment agreed with the Director of Clinical Studies. That matters most if you interrupt your studies or resit.

When the GMC approved Oxford's CPSA in April 2024, the final-year OSCE had 14 eight-minute stations and the year 5 OSCE had 12, each with two minutes of reading time. Real patients take part alongside trained actors. You must pass both exams, because a strong result in one cannot make up for the other.

The pre-clinical years are based in Oxford. From year 4 most teaching happens in hospitals and general practices in and around the city. Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust runs the John Radcliffe, the Churchill, the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and the Horton General Hospital in Banbury. In 2025-26 it hosted 541 clinical medical students.

Much clinical teaching happens at district general hospitals in the Oxford Teaching Network. For year 6 senior rotations the school names the Royal Berkshire in Reading, the Great Western in Swindon, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Northampton General. The year 4 list adds Slough, and the graduate-entry list adds Abingdon.

Clinical years run far longer than Oxford's normal terms. They are roughly 38 to 40 weeks in year 4, 45 to 48 weeks in year 5 and 46 to 48 weeks in year 6, including the ten-week elective. Your clinical offer guarantees a college place but not accommodation, and some colleges reduce or waive rent while you are away on placement.

Alongside the core curriculum, the clinical course includes student-selected components. In year 4 this is the Special Study Theme: seminars and small-group teaching plus an independent project.

In year 6, about twelve weeks across the year go on options you choose: clinical options first, then special study modules. Subjects range from ethics and philosophy to mathematics, global health and evidence-based medicine. On the evidence-based medicine module you spend three weeks at the university's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine reviewing published research with a supervisor.

The elective is a ten-week period in the final six months. You can study any topic relevant to medicine, in Oxford, elsewhere in the UK or abroad, as long as the Director of Clinical Studies approves it. Most students travel overseas. Anyone who fails a final assessment may lose part or all of it to extra clinical training.

Intercalating means taking an extra degree during a medical course. At Oxford there is no separate year out, because an honours science degree is built in for every A100 student. The four-term Final Honour School leads to your BA before clinical training begins.

If you want a further qualification, the regulations let you apply for time out for a postgraduate degree, either between the two stages or during the clinical years. The whole course should still finish within ten years.

Medical Sciences Teaching Centre: the building in the University Science Area where most pre-clinical lectures, classes and tutorials take place.

OxSTaR (Oxford Simulation, Teaching and Research): a simulation centre at the John Radcliffe, part of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences. It has adult and paediatric patient simulators, lifelike computer-controlled manikins, and runs emergency training for groups that include final-year students.

Osler House: the club for all Oxford clinical students, on the John Radcliffe site. It is both a building and a common room, run by a 22-strong student committee, with gardens, a gym, a kitchen and a bar.

Education centres: the hospital trust runs one at each main site. They are the George Pickering Centre at the John Radcliffe, the Robb-Smith Centre at the Churchill and the Terence Mortimer Centre at the Horton. Each has a medical education manager and administrative staff. The trust also runs practice OSCEs for final-year students and, since 2025, for year 4.

In years 1 to 3 your college tutors see you every week, so problems get picked up early. College tutors stay part of your support for the whole course.

For years 4 to 6 the medical school gives you an Educational Supervisor. They do not teach you, but review your learning portfolio, act as a mentor and meet you at least once a term. Pastoral support is coordinated by an Associate Director of Clinical Studies.

Osler House runs a Peer Support Network of clinical students trained to give confidential, informal help. At the Oxford hospitals a Director of Undergraduate Medical Education oversees academic progress and wellbeing, and every student gets an induction before their first clinical placement.

For years 4 to 6 you can apply to any of the 28 colleges that take undergraduates, or to a graduate college. Some colleges do not actively take clinical students and offer them fewer facilities, so check each college's entry on the medical school's college details page before naming your first and second choices. Green Templeton lists weekly case-based seminars and bedside teaching, Christ Church organises mock OSCEs, and St Hugh's lets you reclaim the cost of a stethoscope and a basic examination kit.