The Pears Cumbria (GEM) Medicine course

Years 1 and 2 each have three modules running side by side: Medical Sciences, Clinical Skills and Professional Practice, and Prevention and Healthcare Delivery. The timetable sets aside specific times for scientific knowledge, clinical skills and professional practice, so you focus on each in turn. Years 3 and 4 are each a single clinical module.

Much of the teaching in the first two years is interactive, in both large and small groups. Some sessions ask you to prepare beforehand, so the time together goes on using what you have learned rather than hearing it for the first time. The school describes its approach as active learning: you practise applying knowledge and thinking critically, for example about preventing disease.

Learning moves steadily onto the wards. From Year 2, campus teaching is used to consolidate what you saw on placement. In Years 3 and 4 you are embedded in clinical teams, with structured teaching and simulation sessions that put you in unfamiliar situations and let you practise making decisions when the answer is uncertain.

You are taught by academic staff from Imperial and the University of Cumbria, by NHS staff and by specialists from outside both universities. You may also be taught by other students, known as peer teaching.

The community project sits within the Prevention and Healthcare Delivery modules. These modules cover public health, quality improvement (changing how a service works so that care gets better), leadership and education, models of healthcare and health inequalities. In a team of five or six, you work on a real health problem with a local NHS or community organisation that hosts and supervises the project. It runs for about 18 months from October of Year 1, with at least 150 hours set aside for each student.

Host organisations propose the projects, which can be anywhere in Cumbria or just over the border in the Lancaster district. In your first weeks you rank a shortlist, and the school shares out the projects in a way that keeps overall disappointment as low as possible. The first year group's projects include the causes of lower-limb amputation in people with diabetes, childhood eczema in Cumbria and helping smokers quit in the emergency department.

Most workload details come from Imperial's programme specification, the official outline of the course. The latest one published is for 2025-26 entry and was written for the first intake, so some details may change for later year groups. It describes medicine as intensive. You can normally expect timetabled teaching between 08:00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday, with independent study on top. Where possible, Wednesday afternoons are left free of teaching.

The balance shifts each year. In Year 1, about 40% of your time is scheduled teaching, such as lectures, tutorials, anatomy and clinical skills sessions and placements. The other 60% or so is independent and guided study. In Year 2, placements rise to about a third of your time. In Years 3 and 4 you spend most of your time on placement, with time set aside to consolidate.

While on placement you are expected to do some out-of-hours shifts. The school warns that time for part-time work is very limited. Each year is worth 60 credits under the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), and one credit stands for about 25 hours of study, around 1,500 hours a year. The specification calls these credits notional: MBBS degrees do not usually use credits, so the figures are only a rough guide to workload.

Anatomy is taught with a clinical focus from the start. You learn the structure of the body so that you can understand how particular diseases show themselves and how they are diagnosed and treated. It sits within the Medical Sciences 1 module, which covers the anatomy and physiology of the major organ systems.

The school lists its anatomy resources as models, digital anatomy software, clinical imaging, videos and living anatomy. Living anatomy means learning structures by looking at and feeling them on living people rather than on specimens.

You meet patients from early in Year 1. The school describes patient contact in a range of settings: people's own homes, general practice (GP surgeries), hospitals and community health services. Alongside this you practise on campus in simulation, so skills are rehearsed before you use them with patients.

For the first year group, the first hospital placement was a one-week introduction at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle in December 2025. It was run by North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust (NCIC), which describes it as supervised early contact with patients and with teams made up of different professions. Near the end of Year 1, students went to Furness General Hospital, where one student described a mix of ward rounds and clinical teaching.

Contact builds from there. Year 2 brings longer placements in primary care, meaning GP and community services, and in secondary care, meaning hospital medicine and surgery, plus mental health. In Years 3 and 4 you are part of clinical teams, and the final year includes an assistantship in which you take on the work of a new doctor.

Every assessment on this course is marked pass or fail, and the MBBS itself is not given a class. You normally have to pass each year to move on, and in Years 1 to 3 you must pass every module. Pass marks are not fixed. Each exam is standard set, a process that adjusts the pass mark to how hard that particular exam was.

In Years 1 and 2, every module has at least one summative assessment, the kind that counts towards passing the year. Formats include single best answer questions, where you pick the best of several options, short written answers, prescribing tasks and team-based learning tests. The community project has its own tasks, which the school calls provisional. In Year 1 these are two 2,000-word literature reviews, a 1,500-word project plan and a poster for the public. In Year 2 you defend a conference poster in a viva (a spoken exam), teach first-year students, write a reflection and are marked by your teammates.

You also sit clinical and professional skills assessments. These test history taking, physical examination, choosing and interpreting tests, planning treatment, practical procedures and communication. Your result comes from several examiners across a series of stations, which are short timed tasks. At least one internal and one external examiner rotate through the stations, and you cannot fail on a single station or one examiner's judgement.

Formative assessments, which do not count, give you regular feedback so you can track your progress. You get spoken feedback straight away during clinical teaching. On placement you get clinical encounter forms, a clinician's written feedback on a patient you saw. After timed exams you receive your marks with a breakdown by topic. Assessments may be in class or online, and open or closed book.

In Year 4 you must pass the MLA, the Prescribing Safety Assessment and your workplace-based assessments. The MLA has two parts, both run by your medical school to requirements the GMC sets. The Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) is an on-screen, multiple-choice exam on applying medical knowledge. The Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA) is a practical exam of clinical and professional skills. Every student graduating from a UK medical school must pass the MLA as part of their degree before joining the medical register.

Resits come at the end of each year, before the next one starts. Because summer holidays are short, the exam board may let you start the next year while you wait for a resit, as long as the reassessment falls within its first eight weeks. If you fail the reassessment, you cannot carry on as normal and must either be reassessed again or withdraw.

Your base is the Fusehill Street campus in Carlisle, but a large part of the course happens in partner NHS organisations across Cumbria. Placements cover community, primary and secondary care, including mental health. Over the four years you are expected to do placements in both north and south Cumbria, which may mean travelling or staying in temporary accommodation.

A draft student timetable, which the school published for community project hosts, shows how this works for the year group that started in autumn 2026. Students are based mainly in Carlisle until February of Year 2, during the second term. Half the year group then moves to south Cumbria for clinical placements. The timetable is marked as subject to change.

The school allocates placements so that you see a range of healthcare settings and specialties. Where it can, it groups placements together so that you stay in one area for longer rather than moving about. Some placements are in rural parts of the county, and the school says a driving licence will be an advantage. It says it is working to make sure students have suitable travel and accommodation options.

Travel to and from placements is a compulsory cost. The programme specification says some of it is covered by the NHS Bursary, and the amount depends on where you live and where you are placed.

The placement network is still growing along with the first year group. So far the school and its NHS partners have named two hospitals, one at each end of the county. Placements also take in GP surgeries and community hospitals.

The elective comes at the end of Year 4, after the MLA, and is the final part of your training. You organise your own extended placement, in the UK or abroad, so you can spend time in a setting you choose.

Travel and accommodation costs depend on where you go and are optional extras. The programme specification says they may be subsidised in some circumstances if you apply.

The Fusehill Street campus is about a 10-minute walk from Carlisle city centre. The site has a long link with local healthcare: it was a workhouse in the 1800s, then a wartime hospital, and Carlisle's City Maternity Hospital until 2000. You share the campus with University of Cumbria students on many other courses.

The Clinical Skills Lab is fitted with the same equipment you will meet in clinical settings. It is where you practise assessing patients, procedures, infection control and communication under supervision. The Simulation Lab is laid out like a hospital ward, for practising teamwork and decisions in realistic scenarios.

The Immersive Room uses technology, physical props, soundscapes and actors to recreate clinical situations. The campus also has science laboratories and radiology rooms, with X-ray machines of the same type used in NHS hospitals, so you get used to imaging before you meet it on placement.

The library offers study space and help from library staff, and the nearby Learning Gateway is open 24 hours a day for individual or group study. There is also a sports hall and fitness suite, a Students' Union and a multi-faith chapel.

Your Professional Development Tutor (PDT) is the centre of your support. Through regular one-to-one meetings, they help with study strategies, clinical skills, academic and professional goals, wellbeing and work-life balance. They also help you learn to use feedback well, and encourage you to take part in research, quality improvement and reflection.

Drawing on their own clinical experience in the county, PDTs introduce you to healthcare networks in Cumbria. They work with careers services on your plans, and you can also use the Imperial medical school careers team. It offers one-to-one appointments, talks from doctors in different specialties, skills sessions, networking events and careers fairs.

As a PCSM student you are an affiliated student of the University of Cumbria and can use its services. Disability support comes from the University of Cumbria, which draws up a learner support plan with you and shares it with your programme tutor. Its Skills@Cumbria team helps with library, academic and digital skills.

First-year accommodation is guaranteed if PCSM is your first choice on UCAS and you apply for housing by 30 June. Options include 85 en-suite rooms on campus and 249 rooms at Denton Holme Student Village, a 20-minute walk away. Medical students' contracts cover Christmas and Easter, so you do not have to move out, and summer extensions can usually be arranged.

For Years 2 to 4, the university will try to house you, subject to availability. Where you live may change during Year 2: under the school's draft timetable, half of the 2026 intake moves to south Cumbria in February of that year.