The St Mary's Twickenham Medicine course

The course is a spiral curriculum: core subjects come back every year, each time in more depth and with more clinical context. Anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, microbiology, immunology and haematology all appear in both Year 1 and Year 2, for example. Each year is worth 120 credits, 600 over the five years, and every year is organised around the same three strands.

Integrated Applied Science and Clinical Medicine (IASCM) covers how the body works and what goes wrong, applied to real patient conditions. Medicine and Society (MedSoc) covers the psychology and sociology of health, epidemiology (how diseases affect whole populations), statistics, law, ethics and research skills. Clinical and Professional Practice (CPP) covers clinical skills, communication, professional behaviour and your placements.

Across the five years you spend about 6,440 hours learning. About a third (2,089.5 hours) is contact time with teachers and 40% (2,604 hours) is placement, with the rest split between guided study (833 hours) and independent study (913.5 hours). Lectures are most frequent in Year 1 and tail off by Year 5, while placement time rises steadily. Simulation is most prominent in the early years.

From Year 3 the three strands stop being separate campus subjects and are taught within your clinical placements, with campus teaching weeks between blocks. You also learn alongside students from other health professions, and take part in clinical audits, research projects and critical appraisal (judging how reliable a piece of research is). You must attend 100% of clinical placements and at least 80% of other taught sessions.

You first work with patients in Year 1. Over 16 weeks from January to May, you spend eight half days in a local GP practice, alternating with eight half days at Intergenerational Music Making. Each GP afternoon is split between watching consultations or taking patient histories and working on your CPP 1 GP Project.

Year 2 builds on this with 12 half days in a local GP practice between October and May, plus a Social Action Project, a piece of project work in the local community. You also take your first student-selected component (SSC), a placement or project you choose yourself, described under Electives below.

Across the course the settings widen to include NHS hospitals, hospices (which care for people with terminal illness), charities, local schools and private health providers. Placements get longer and more intensive each year, and from Year 3 they take up most of the year.

Every key topic and placement block in the programme specification is marked pass or fail. St Mary's uses both formative assessments, which give you feedback on how you are doing, and summative ones, which decide whether you progress. Pass marks and progression rules are set out in the university's academic regulations and the MBBS Programme Handbook.

Every student graduating from a UK medical school must pass the Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA) as part of their degree before joining the GMC's medical register. It has two parts, both taken at your own medical school: an applied knowledge test (AKT), an on-screen exam of multiple choice questions, and a clinical and professional skills assessment (CPSA), a practical exam. The GMC sets the requirements both must meet, and St Mary's says all its students will sit the MLA.

Knowledge is tested in written exams made of single best answer (SBA) questions, where you pick the one best option for a clinical scenario. You also sit regular progress tests through each year, some using MLA-style questions, which track how your knowledge grows over time.

Practical skills are tested in Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs). An OSCE is a circuit of short, timed stations with simulated patients, who are trained actors, where you might take a history, examine someone or explain a diagnosis.

On placement, supervisors assess you through workplace-based assessments. In a mini clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX) someone watches you with a patient and gives feedback. Direct observation of procedural skills (DOPS) does the same for practical procedures. In a case-based discussion (CBD) you talk a senior through a patient you have seen, and multi-source feedback (MSF) collects views from colleagues.

You also keep logbooks and an e-portfolio, an online record of your clinical experience and reflections that is reviewed at regular appraisals, as in postgraduate training. Other assessed work includes reflective writing, group projects and presentations, SSC projects and research portfolios, and an ongoing appraisal of your professional behaviour. Feedback on assessments is due within 15 working days.

Placements are spread across London, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. St Mary's works with a network of providers rather than a single NHS trust, the kind of organisation that runs local hospitals or health services. In November 2024 St Mary's signed an agreement with Circle Health Group, a network of independent (private) hospitals, to provide placements for its medical students. The announcement names no individual hospitals.

Other partners include NHS trusts, GP practices, charities and hospices, among them Meadow House, Royal Trinity Hospice and Princess Alice Hospice. The Circle announcement also lists refugee medicine and international healthcare among the settings students will gain experience in.

Phase 1 placements are in general practice and community settings. Phase 2 adds rotations such as general medicine, surgery, paediatrics and mental health. The school says it places students in community settings in areas of need.

The School of Medicine placements team organises all placements and tells you your individual allocation. Most students are allocated by the school. If you have reasonable adjustments, meaning changes agreed because of a disability or health condition, you are asked for placement preferences, which are taken into account.

In Phase 2 some placements may be more than an hour's commute from Twickenham station. You can then either commute and have your travel reimbursed, or stay in accommodation offered at the host hospital site. If you are placed more than an hour away in Year 3, you get priority for a closer placement in Year 4.

Student-selected components (SSCs) let you follow your own interests. SSC2 in Year 2 is chosen from experiences in allied health, such as physiotherapy or occupational therapy, or related settings outside the NHS. SSC3 sits inside the Year 3 general practice block and teaches clinical audit: checking whether a service's care meets an agreed standard.

SSC4 in Year 4 builds on that audit work with a focus on quality improvement, which means testing changes that make care safer or better. SSCs are assessed through project work, presentations and research portfolios.

In Year 5 you pick a four-week choice block from a list of options, taken in March and April. The course then ends with an elective in May, a clinical placement of your own choosing.

Intercalating means taking a year out of the medicine course to study for a separate degree, then coming back. At St Mary's it is optional. You can apply once you have successfully completed Year 3. You then spend one year on a BSc, MSc or MRes (a research master's) at St Mary's or another approved institution, and rejoin the MBBS in Year 4. You pay tuition fees for the extra year.

The medical school is based in the new Centenary Building on the Twickenham campus, which holds lecture rooms, quiet study spaces and the clinical teaching areas. The Integrated Skills and Simulation Centre is where you practise clinical skills and simulated scenarios. The building also has a teaching ward, set up like a hospital ward for practice, and an assisted living teaching space.

Teaching also covers technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health. The university library has more than 500 study places.

Each student has a Personal (Academic) Tutor from the School of Medicine, who gives academic guidance, helps with concerns and helps you set goals. Staff keep an open-door policy for questions on module content, research and assessments. The Director of Undergraduate Medicine can help with study strategies and point you towards university services.

The Head of Professional Development and Practice and the Student Education and Welfare Manager link you, the university and placement providers. They also support students going through the school's professionalism processes, including fitness to practise, the procedure used when there are concerns about a student's conduct or health. The school stresses stepping in early, before problems escalate.

On placement you have a nominated educational supervisor, a clinical supervisor and placement coordinators, with regular check-ins and feedback. Away from campus you can still use the university's virtual learning environment (VLE) and Togetherall, an online wellbeing support service open 24 hours a day.

If you experience bullying, harassment or misconduct, a Report and Support channel lets you get help or make a formal report. Concerns about patient safety or the learning environment go through a separate raising-a-concern process.