The Southampton Medicine course

The course has four phases. Fundamentals of Medicine covers years 1 and 2. Progression into Clinical Practice is year 3. Developing Clinical Practice runs through year 4 and the first half of year 5, ending with finals. Preparing for Independent Practice fills the rest of year 5 until graduation. Every module is compulsory, but several let you choose your own topic or project.

In years 1 and 2 the science sits in Applied Knowledge modules, organised as clinical topic weeks. Each topic is a condition, such as head and neck cancer or hypothyroidism, and specialists teach the relevant anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, psychology, sociology and public health around it. The order is mostly by body system. Applied Knowledge 1 is 200 hours of study: 54 hours of lectures, 27 of tutorials, 18 of seminars and 9 of practical classes, with the rest spent preparing and following up.

The balance shifts sharply as you go. In year 1, 32% of your time is scheduled teaching, 67% independent study and 1% placement. In year 3, each nine-week placement block counts for 300 hours of study, and 192 to 200 of those hours are spent on placement, about two-thirds. By year 4 placement is 52% of your time and scheduled teaching only 5%, and year 5 is half placement, 40% independent study and 10% teaching.

Years 1 and 2 mostly follow the university semester calendar. After that the course runs to its own timetable, with shorter holidays and some teaching and exams outside normal university dates. The dates are published well in advance in the undergraduate handbook.

In years 1 and 2 a week is shaped by that week's clinical topic. Lectures, tutorials, seminars and practicals look at the same condition from different angles, so the anatomy, drugs and psychology you study connect to one patient story.

One afternoon a week is clinical, rotating between a GP practice, a campus seminar with a primary care facilitator and a clinical skills session. In year 1 this adds up to about 21 hours in GP practices, 21 hours of seminars and 9 hours of skills practice. Wednesday afternoons are usually kept free for sport in years 1 to 3.

Anatomy starts in year 1 as one of the specialist subjects taught inside the Applied Knowledge topic weeks. It is run by the Centre for Learning Anatomical Sciences (CLAS), a small team whose academic staff also hold roles in running BM5, such as year coordinator and module coordinator.

Classes take place in the Anatomical Sciences Laboratory on the hospital campus, which has one large teaching laboratory and a smaller space that can be split into three rooms. Its teaching collection includes prosected specimens, meaning body parts that experts have already dissected to show particular structures. It also has anatomical models and potted specimens, which are normal and diseased organs preserved in sealed containers. You need your own white coat for the lab.

The CLAS team says it introduces radiological anatomy, how body structures look on scans, very early in the course. It also treats surface anatomy, working out where structures lie from the outside of the body, as a core skill.

You meet patients in your first weeks through the Clinical Practice 1 module. In the GP part of your weekly clinical afternoon you learn to take a history, a structured conversation about a patient's symptoms, background and concerns. By the end of year 1 you should be able to examine the joints and muscles, the lungs and the heart and circulation.

Year 1 also includes a four-hour observation shift in an emergency department, a maternity unit or a similar area, where you see how care runs somewhere busy and start talking to patients. Your Time for Dementia visits begin the same year.

In year 2, Clinical Practice 2 keeps the weekly clinical afternoon and adds three teaching sessions with a clinician at University Hospital Southampton, so you can compare hospital care with general practice. You learn to examine more systems, including the brain and nerves, the digestive system and the hormone (endocrine) system. From year 3, most of your time in each placement block is spent with clinical teams.

You must pass every module to move on, and a failed module is retaken at the next opportunity, which can mean repeating the whole year. Before each type of summative assessment, the kind that counts, you sit a formative version, a practice run that does not count, and get feedback on it.

The early years lean on written exams, built around MCQ papers that test how you apply knowledge to clinical problems. From year 3 the weight moves to practical and placement-based assessment. On placement you are judged through end-of-placement evaluations by your tutors, your learning portfolio and ACCs. Practical procedures are signed off in an online portfolio.

From 2024-25 every UK medical degree must include a pass in the Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA), which the GMC requires before it will register a new graduate with a licence to practise. The MLA has two parts: the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) and the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA). At Southampton both sit inside finals, alongside a third part, the workplace-based assessment.

The AKT is an MCQ exam shared with other UK medical schools through the Medical Schools Council (MSC), so much of it is set nationally. The workplace-based assessment gathers the ACCs from your year 4 and 5 placements. In the design the school described to the GMC in 2022, that meant 18 observed assessments in clinical settings. If you were not clearly at the level of a new F1, 6 to 12 more consultations were assessed.

The CPSA is Southampton's own final OSCE. In the design the school submitted in 2022, which the GMC approved in April 2024, you had to pass all the other elements of final-year assessment before sitting it. It was a sequential OSCE of up to 20 stations, run at a single site: everyone sat ten nine-minute stations, each with two minutes' reading time. Those who passed at least eight stations and reached a high enough overall score stopped there, and the rest sat a second sequence of ten two to three weeks later.

You also sit the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA), a national exam on safe prescribing, and you are expected to travel to Southampton for it and most other exams, even when placed elsewhere. Students who score consistently highly across all five years can graduate with a BMBS with distinction, and distinctions are also given for individual phases.

In years 1 and 2 you are mostly on campus, going out to a GP practice as part of your weekly clinical afternoon. Year 2 adds three teaching sessions at University Hospital Southampton and your healthcare support worker hours.

Year 3 placements are with partner trusts including Portsmouth, Winchester and Southampton. Each nine-week block is spent in one or more partner trusts or, for the primary care block, one or more GP practices. Student groups rotate through the blocks at different times.

In years 4 and 5, placements can be anywhere across the Wessex region. Settings include hospital trusts, GP surgeries, urgent care centres, the ambulance service and third-sector organisations, meaning charities and voluntary groups in the community. The school expects some placement work in the evenings, at night and at weekends, to prepare you for the shift patterns doctors work.

Because placement learning depends on which patients are there, the school promises the same broad opportunities rather than identical experiences. It expects you to spot gaps in your learning and seek out the cases and skills you need. You pay your own travel and parking costs for teaching and placements.

There are no optional modules, but choice runs through the course. In Health Improvement your group picks a local health issue, and in Medical Humanities you choose the art form and subject you work with. The school also points to public, global and planetary health as areas where you can follow your own interests.

The main chosen block is the student selected unit (SSU) in the second half of year 5. You can take an elective placement in the UK or abroad, a local clinical placement, or a research or education project.

You pay for any travel and accommodation your SSU needs. If you go abroad you also pay for insurance, medical insurance and any vaccinations. An SSU in the UK may need its own enhanced DBS check, the criminal record check needed to work with children and vulnerable adults.

Intercalating means pausing medicine to study for a separate degree, then returning to the course. At Southampton it is optional and happens between year 3 and year 4, so it adds time to your studies.

You can apply for a Master of Medical Science (MMedSc) or an MSc at Southampton, or for an intercalated BSc (iBSc) or MSc at another university. The course page features BM5 students currently intercalating in an MMedSc. Because the new course no longer includes a built-in BMedSc, intercalating is now the way to add a second degree to your BMBS. If you would rather not add time, the final-year SSU also lets you choose a research project.

Most of your learning happens on the hospital campus at Southampton General Hospital. Lecture theatres, research labs and practice rooms are in the hospital's South Academic Block. The clinical skills rooms are set up like the wards of a modern hospital, so you practise common procedures somewhere that looks like where you will later work.

The Centre for Learning Anatomical Sciences and its anatomy teaching laboratories are on the same campus. So is the Health Services Library, a medical and health sciences library in the hospital's academic block, run with the hospital trust and the NHS. The faculty also has computer suites and refurbished lecture theatres, and you can use the university's life sciences facilities.

There are no sports or entertainment facilities on the hospital site. For those you use the university's other campuses, and Highfield, home of the students' union, is about a 20-minute bus ride away.

The GMC's 2024-25 annual review recorded the school's plans to expand simulation-based learning, where you practise clinical situations on manikins or with actors in a safe setting. It noted that a new medical school building is planned with better facilities for this.

For clinical work you are given two pairs of scrubs in year 1 and buy your own stethoscope, which is on sale at induction. Wristwatches are not allowed in clinical areas, so the school suggests a fob watch that pins to your clothing.

You are given a personal academic tutor when you arrive, normally a member of academic staff in medicine or a related subject, who offers one-to-one support for the whole course. Behind them sit a faculty senior tutor team, peer support and mentoring.

The Personal and Professional Development modules in years 1 and 2 teach resilience and when to ask for help, especially on placement.

The GMC's 2024 report on the CPSA describes what happens if you fail it. You are invited to meet an academic, usually one to one, to go through examiner comments without seeing station details. Your personal tutor receives your marks so they can offer personal and wellbeing support, and senior tutors contact unsuccessful students directly.

Students also help shape the course. A staff-student liaison committee meets four times a year with representatives from years 1 to 5 and from MedSoc, the medical students' society. The GMC found it well run in its 2024-25 review. Other feedback routes include mid-placement meetings and regular meetings with module and placement leads, though the GMC noted some students seemed unaware of, or reluctant to use, some of them.