The Ulster University Medical School Medicine course

In PBL, a small group is given a patient case and works out what it needs to understand to explain it. Each member then studies those topics before the group meets again to pull the case together. Ulster uses the cases to teach basic science, clinical science and the psychological and social side of illness together, rather than as separate subjects.

Three themes run through the course: Basic and Clinical Sciences; Patients, Populations and Society; and Professional Skills. Between them they cover the science of disease, the community and population setting in which care happens, and the practical and professional skills of a doctor.

In Years 1 and 2 the emphasis is on small-group work with clinical cases, independent study, clinical and communication skills tutorials and lectures, alongside placements in general practice and hospitals. In Years 3 and 4 the balance flips. Clinical attachments come first, and teaching materials are provided alongside them so the learning carries on while you are on the wards. The university says many of its lecturers are working clinicians.

At the GMC's January 2025 visit, students said their PBL cases covered a wide range of patients, and clinical skills sessions covered working with interpreters and health inequalities. The school had told the GMC in 2024 that some cases came from its partner school. Year 1 and Year 2 students also had compulsory lectures and assessments on equality and diversity.

Campus teaching usually runs from 09:15 to 17:15, Monday to Friday. The attendance policy is modelled on a workplace: you are expected at every timetabled session, and any absence has to be reported promptly and professionally, as you would to an employer. Your detailed timetable is issued at induction.

In Year 1 your week is built around your PBL group, with your GP placement starting in week 4. In Year 2, blocks of PBL alternate with five-week attachments in general practice, medicine and surgery. From Year 3 you are mostly on placement, and shifts include some out-of-hours work, particularly later in the course.

Ulster teaches anatomy with no cadaveric work, meaning you will not dissect or study donated human bodies. The emphasis is on technology and on imaging the living body.

The main tool is the Anatomage table, a life-size touchscreen that displays a three-dimensional digital human body. You can strip it back layer by layer, rotate it and repeat a virtual dissection as often as you need. The school's anatomy laboratory was fitted out with these tables and hand-held ultrasound devices when it opened in 2021.

Ultrasound shows structures inside a living body in real time, and you also study X-ray, CT and MRI images. In a public demonstration at the Northern Ireland Science Festival in February 2024, the school's anatomist took visitors through a typical hands-on practical session that used the tables together with these imaging methods.

You first work in a clinical setting on a GP placement that starts in the fourth week of Year 1. On campus, Year 1 prepares you with clinical and communication skills practised on models and with simulated patients, and teaches you to turn a patient's symptoms and signs into a list of possible diagnoses.

In Year 2 you rotate through five-week attachments in general practice, medicine and surgery, and begin using your skills on real patients under supervision. Years 3 and 4 are almost entirely clinical, as the year-by-year section below sets out.

At the GMC's January 2025 visit, students in every year said the early contact with patients built their confidence. They described full inductions to each placement, details sent well in advance, and supervisors who knew what they should be learning. The GMC listed placements and supervision as an area working well.

The GMC's Outcomes for graduates sets out what every new UK doctor must know and be able to do. Ulster's assessment follows its three domains: Professional Knowledge, Professional Skills, and Professional Values and Behaviours. Across the course you meet single best answer (SBA) exams, where you pick the best of several answers to a clinical scenario, short answer papers, OSCEs, workplace-based assessments and a professional development portfolio.

Workplace-based assessments happen on placement. In the plans Ulster sent the GMC in 2024, they were case-based discussions, mini clinical evaluation exercises, where a supervisor watches you with a patient, and direct observation of procedures. Your professionalism, the Professional Values and Behaviours domain, is tracked across the course through your portfolio, the projects you choose yourself (student-selected components), electives, reflective writing and clinical sign-offs. Under the same 2024 scheme, you must pass this domain before you sit the final knowledge and clinical exams.

Since 2024/25, a UK medical degree only counts as a primary medical qualification, the degree that lets you register as a doctor, if it includes a pass in the MLA. The MLA has two parts: the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) and the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA).

Ulster's AKT is the shared national paper produced through the Medical Schools Council. When the GMC approved it in 2024, it was two computer-based papers of 100 SBA questions, each lasting two hours, on consecutive days. It is set at the level of a doctor in their first week of foundation training. The 2024 plans also set a practice AKT in February of the final year.

Ulster's CPSA is an OSCE. In the plans the GMC approved in March 2024, stations last 10 to 15 minutes with a minute's reading time, and you sit no more than five stations in a day. To pass, you must pass at least 65 per cent of stations as well as reach the overall standard. Simulated patients award a small share of each station's marks, typically 5 to 10 per cent.

You also sit the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA), a national online exam on safe prescribing run by MSC Assessment and the British Pharmacological Society. All new UK doctors must pass it before completing their first foundation year. Under Ulster's 2024 scheme, passes are banked within the year, so you resit only what you fail, with resits in May or June. A third attempt, if allowed, means repeating the whole final year.

Placements take place in general practice, hospitals and community settings across Northern Ireland, and Ulster says travel will be required. You spend more than 83 core weeks on clinical placement in total. You pay your own accommodation and transport costs while on placement. You also need to buy a stethoscope and scrubs, and to have a smartphone or similar device for assessments and course materials on placement.

In Northern Ireland, hospitals and community services are run by health and social care (HSC) trusts. When the first class began Year 3 in August 2023, the school said students were going to every HSC trust in Northern Ireland and to a large number of GP practices. One of the first graduates described the class being welcomed in GP surgeries and at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.

Students who need reasonable adjustments or have caring responsibilities can have their placements allocated in advance. Ulster also runs joint placement quality visits with Queen's University Belfast (QUB), Northern Ireland's other medical school, where students from both share supervisors.

Simulation facilities vary by trust. At that visit, students praised the Western and Southern trusts' facilities, but those placed in the Belfast trust had received little or no simulation teaching. The school responded that it asks trusts to put real patient contact first. It also runs compulsory simulation sessions itself for procedures such as blood transfusion and passing a nasogastric tube (a tube through the nose into the stomach).

Student-selected components (SSCs) are parts of the course where you choose the topic. Ulster particularly encourages students interested in remote and rural medicine, medical education or digital innovation to follow those interests through SSCs and the elective.

Year 2 ends with a three-week student-selected elective placement, a clinical placement you choose yourself.

The main elective comes in the final year. You pick an area of medicine that interests you and can go anywhere in the world, including the UK and Ireland. An academic reviews and approves your plan, and you write a report when you return. Going overseas is optional and self-funded, but the school helps with bursary applications where bursaries exist.

The first final-year class told the GMC in 2025 that elective guidance had arrived late, in November, which made overseas plans tight. The school says elective handbooks now go out at the end of Year 3, and it expects to give fuller information from Year 2.

Intercalating means taking a year out of a medical degree to study for an extra degree, such as a BSc or a master's. There is no option to intercalate at Ulster, because everyone on the course already has a degree. The school's founding dean said this in 2021, when the course opened.

The School of Medicine's home is a refurbished listed building at 3 and 4 College Avenue on the Derry~Londonderry campus, once a professor's residence and dating from the 1880s. When it opened in 2021 it held an anatomy laboratory, four clinical and communication skills teaching rooms, eight PBL rooms, and shared hub spaces for group and individual study.

A second phase is planned. The university is investing about £86 million in new School of Medicine accommodation on a waterfront site on Strand Road, next to the campus, including teaching space and data analytics labs. It is expected to be finished by 2030, the year a 2026 entrant would graduate, so most of your course would use the current building.

The same programme includes a Medical Education Facility for the Western Trust on the Altnagelvin Hospital site and an expansion of C-TRIC, the Clinical Translational Research and Innovation Centre at Altnagelvin. These would add to the education centre the Western Trust already runs at the hospital.

Each student has a Studies Advisor who stays with them for the whole course. There are three formal meetings a year. Students told the GMC in 2025 that advisors are approachable at any time, and talk about wellbeing and how you are getting on with your year group as well as academic work.

The university's Student Wellbeing team is introduced at induction, and reminders about support are sent at pressure points such as the run-up to exams. Students with extra time in OSCEs get 50 per cent extra reading time, and time to move between stations is now built in on top.

The school explains at induction how to raise a concern on campus or on placement, including an anonymous route. Student representatives and end-of-module questionnaires collect feedback, and a document shows what earlier cohorts asked for and what changed. The GMC's 2025 report listed the school's supportive culture, student support and response to feedback among the areas working well.

Under the scheme Ulster described to the GMC in 2024, if you fail the final clinical exam you meet one-to-one with a senior member of the academic team. Together you go through your marks and feedback and agree a plan for the resit. Every candidate gets an individual feedback report for each station, showing their score against the rest of the cohort.