The Worcester Medical School Medicine course

Years 1 and 2 make up Phase 1, and they run in learning weeks. Each week is built around one clinical problem or patient presentation. Lectures set the scene, and the week's patient case sets what your PBL group needs to learn. You work through it together and then study on your own. Campus teaching happens in theory weeks, which mix face-to-face sessions with online activities.

Around the PBL case, you study the relevant anatomy, physiology (how the body works), radiology (medical imaging) and pathology (how disease changes the body) in small groups. You also practise consultation skills: taking a history (asking a patient about their symptoms and background), examining them and reasoning towards a diagnosis. Public health, psychology, social science, ethics and law are taught through the same weekly topic rather than as separate courses.

The school uses a flipped classroom: recorded material is available so you can prepare beforehand, and time together is spent discussing and applying it. Self-directed learning is timetabled every week. The school is clear that some of the most useful learning is unplanned, when a patient turns up with a relevant problem, so you are expected to be flexible and seek out those chances.

Years 3 and 4 make up Phase 2, and almost all of your learning happens on placement. Your teachers are now mostly practising clinicians, such as GPs, hospital consultants and their teams. The emphasis is on broad clinical skills that every new doctor needs, as set out by the GMC, rather than detailed knowledge of narrow specialties.

In Phase 2 you keep practising clinical skills, and this can include examining each other. The school says this helps you learn what a healthy body looks like and how to put a patient at ease. It has arrangements to keep these sessions safe, private and comfortable for everyone.

In Phase 1, each week follows the learning-week pattern described above: lectures and PBL work on the week's clinical problem, small-group anatomy and science, consultation skills practice and timetabled self-directed learning.

Teaching takes up to 24 hours a week, in group work and face-to-face sessions on campus or on placement. A further 4 to 8 hours of self-directed study are timetabled. On top of that you are expected to do around 10 hours a week of your own study, such as reading journal articles and books, library research, coursework and exam preparation.

On placement, core hours are 9am to 5pm, but you are also expected to gain some experience of on-call and emergency work outside those hours, as qualified doctors do. Placements can include evenings and weekends. The school points out that weekends on the wards can bring more teaching from junior doctors and more time with patients.

Timetabled teaching is compulsory and can fall on any day of the week, with some sessions in the evening. The university describes the pace as fast and the days as busy. It also warns that most students can fit in very little paid work alongside the course.

Worcester does not use dissection. The medical school has no laboratories for cadaveric dissection, the dissection of bodies donated to medical science. Instead you study anatomy through models and medical images, in small groups, alongside physiology, radiology and pathology for the same week's topic.

The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Building has an anatomy skills room equipped with high-fidelity models, meaning detailed, lifelike replicas of the body. They are used to show not only normal anatomy but also physiology and pathology, so you can see how the body works and how disease changes it.

Anatomy is examined in an anatomy spotter in each of Years 1 and 2. A spotter is a practical exam in which you identify structures or their functions in answer to a series of questions, set across two papers. Anatomy also comes up in the data and image interpretation exams in Years 1 to 3.

You meet patients in general practice from your first weeks. About every third week you spend a day with a local GP at their surgery, watching how they deal with patients. You learn about and from the rest of the primary care team: the GP practice staff and community services that are most people's first contact with the NHS. You are also observed with patients yourself. Across Years 1 and 2 these GP days add up to about four weeks.

Hospital time starts in Phase 1 too. Across Years 1 and 2 you spend around 14 to 15 weeks on full-time hospital placements (the programme specification gives 4 weeks in Year 1 and 10 in Year 2). These blocks are not about learning a specialty. They get you used to how a hospital works and what doctors actually do.

In Phase 2 you become part of clinical teams and take more responsibility for patients' care as you go, leading up to the senior assistantship in Year 4.

Each year is one module, and each module is made up of several assessment elements of equal weight. You must pass every element separately, so a strong result in one cannot make up for a failed one. The pass mark for graded work is 50 per cent. Merits and distinctions are awarded each year for scores of 60 and 80 per cent in that year's graded assessments.

Knowledge tests use single best answer questions. Each gives a short clinical scenario and a question with five options, and you pick the most plausible answer. You sit three knowledge tests in Year 1 and two in each later year. The data and image interpretation exam, in Years 1 to 3, is a computer-based paper on clinical signs, images, test results, research data and relevant anatomy.

OSCEs run from Year 2 onwards. Most stations model all or part of a consultation with a real or simulated patient. The knowledge tests, OSCEs, anatomy spotters and data interpretation exams are standard set, which means a recognised method is used to fix each paper's pass mark. Written projects and case studies are marked against the university's grade descriptors, and the marking is checked for consistency. Presentations, posters and online activities are also among the assessment formats.

At Worcester your last Year 4 knowledge tests form the written part of the Medical Licensing Assessment, the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT). Your final OSCE forms its practical part, the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA). Every UK graduate must pass both before joining the medical register. You will also sit the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA), a national online test of safe prescribing run by the British Pharmacological Society and MSC Assessment, part of the Medical Schools Council. Every new doctor must pass it by the end of their first year of work.

Your electronic portfolio runs through all four years and records your progress towards the GMC's Outcomes for Graduates, which set out what every new UK doctor must be able to do. Your Personal Academic Tutor reviews it twice a year for feedback, and each part has a deadline. Missing portfolio records stop you progressing.

If you fail an element, you resit it in the summer reassessment period, and a passed resit is capped at a pass. After that, the next chance is to retake the year, which the exam board only allows if you have passed at least four of your assessment elements. If you leave early, the credits you have passed can lead to a Certificate or Diploma of Higher Education, or a BSc, in Medical Studies.

• Clinical logbook: each practical procedure is signed off by a qualified assessor, in simulation and, where appropriate, on placement.
• A report from your supervisor at the end of each placement, based on watching you work. It covers your attendance and timekeeping, how keen you are to learn and how your clinical skills are developing.
• At least one reflective piece of about 500 words for each clinical placement, which a member of staff answers in writing.
• Multi-source feedback: anonymous, combined feedback on your professional behaviour, discussed in a compulsory meeting with your tutor or clinical mentor.
• Integrated consultation skills assessments (iCSA) twice a year during community sessions, where you are watched taking a history from and examining patients.
• Records of the learning opportunities you have had in clinical settings in Years 1 and 2, and eight workplace-based assessments in each of Years 3 and 4.

Your clinical training takes place in NHS services across Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Placements can be anywhere in the three counties, including the GP days and hospital blocks of Years 1 and 2. The course page warns that this can mean a lot of travel around the region. In Phase 2 about half your time is in community attachments, mostly but not only in general practice. The other half is in hospital (secondary) care in the local hospitals of the three counties.

The course page describes the settings you can expect. In the community they include GP practices, outreach clinics (specialist clinics held away from the main hospital), community hospitals and care facilities. In hospitals they include medical and surgical wards, cancer treatment centres, psychiatric in-patient units, labour wards and research laboratories.

Each placement has an educational supervisor, and each major hospital site has a member of the school's administrative team as your point of contact. The major hospitals have their own teaching facilities, and electronic learning resources are available on every clinical site. The school names five NHS trusts as its partners, and the areas below list the main hospitals those trusts run. The school also says it makes full use of community hospitals as places for students to train.

The GMC's 2024/25 report found that Clinical Teaching Fellows, doctors in dedicated teaching roles at partner sites, understood the curriculum and taught effectively. It noted new NHS partnerships set up for the Year 3 clerkships, in GP practices and hospitals. It also asked the school to keep checking that clerkships give students a range of specialties and a real place in hospital teams.

At Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, placements for TCMS students run through the trust's Undergraduate Academy, which also teaches students from the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick. Depending on the placement, you may train at one or more of the trust's three hospitals. Formal teaching is mostly held in the Charles Hastings Education Centre at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, which has a simulation centre.

At that trust your educational supervisor is a senior doctor who signs off your end-of-placement report. Teaching includes bedside sessions, tutorials, clinical skills workshops and simulation, with virtual reality practice where appropriate. Students there have a common room, library services and on-call accommodation, meaning rooms for when you are working on call.

Two long-running patient projects run through Years 1 and 2, so you get to know the same people over a long period. In the Family Case Study you visit a family with a new baby in their home. You learn about childbirth and child development, and about the public health, psychological and social side of family life.

In Living with a Diagnosis you are given a patient who has a long-term condition, and you learn how it affects them and their family while building your communication and clinical skills. You can name an area that interests you, such as neurology, psychiatry, cardiology or oncology (cancer care), and your GP tutor will try to find a patient to match.

You also choose your own topic for the Student Selected Project in Year 1. In Year 3 you design and run a quality improvement project. Quality improvement means spotting a problem in how care is delivered, testing a change and measuring whether it makes care safer or better.

In Year 4 you have an Independent Preparation for Practice period. You pick a placement yourself, with guidance from the school, and it can be in the UK or overseas. The aim is to fill gaps in your experience or follow an interest before you start work as a doctor.

The medical school's home is the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Building, which the university calls its Three Counties Centre for Health and Wellbeing. It cost £16 million and stands on the St John's bank of the River Severn in Worcester, on the university's Severn Campus. It was designed for students of different health professions to learn together, and it also hosts training for people already working in the region's health service.

• An anatomy skills room with high-fidelity models for studying anatomy, pathology and physiology.
• A simulated GP surgery with a suite of consultation rooms.
• Technology for observing sessions, and a space for feedback.
• Rooms that can easily be divided into stations for OSCEs.
• Computer access, small-group study spaces and a large open-plan learning area with a cafe.
• The university's existing clinical simulation suites and simulated hospital environment.
• The Hive in Worcester, a combined university and public library with around a quarter of a million books.

Every student has a Personal Academic Tutor (PAT), who supports your academic progress and points you to welfare services when you need them. You meet your PAT at least four times in Year 1 and at least three times in each later year. In Phase 2, your educational supervisor on placement takes on the PAT role.

The school has a Student Support and Guidance Lead who coordinates support for medical students and, with the lead for PBL, guides the tutors. You also have dedicated careers support and occupational health, the service that looks after health matters affecting your clinical work, as well as the university's student services and Disability and Dyslexia Service.

In its 2024/25 review, the GMC reported that students in both year groups felt a sense of belonging, that the school acted promptly on student feedback and that induction was supportive. It also asked for more evidence on how students' pastoral and wellbeing needs are met while they are out on clerkship placements.