MBChB Medicine (6 years including foundation year) / Course details

Your curriculum comprises a number of different elements carefully integrated to promote your ability to learn effectively and succeed in your medical degree.

During Years 1 and 2, you will be mostly based on The University of Manchester's Oxford Road campus, with visits to centres of excellence for clinical medicine, community settings and teaching hospitals across the North West of England.

At the start of the course, you are introduced to the learning processes necessary for successful study at university level. You will Years 1 and 2 are divided into four modules, the content of which relate to the overall curriculum themes of doctor as scientist and scholar, doctor as practitioner and doctor as professional, as stipulated by the General Medical Council.

Each unit is divided into a series of topics that take the form of themed cases. The cases contextualise learning to prepare you for the way in which doctors’ understand and address patients’ problems. At the end of each week you will come together in Themed Case Discussion (TCD) sessions to develop your skills in collaborative group working and independent learning.

There is a significant emphasis on practical work, including anatomy dissection, physiology and pharmacology practical classes, clinical learning, and personal development activities that are designed to introduce you to the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to become a successful junior doctor.

You will learn about the body through detailed studies of molecules, cells, tissues and organs and the systems that control their activities. The modules are partially system-based. In the Year 1 Life Cycle module, you will study the cellular and molecular processes that underlie reproduction, development and growth. In addition, you will explore the immune system and the pathophysiology of genetic disease and cancer. The second module of Year 1, Cardiorespiratory Fitness, focuses on the heart, lungs and blood systems.

Year 2 continues with two more units. The first is Mind and Movement, where you will explore the brain and the nervous system connections to the muscles that move the skeleton. The focus is on neuroscience, but the concepts in this unit prepare you for concepts applied to clinical medicine, including mental health.

The final unit, Nutrition, Metabolism and Excretion, introduces you to the gastrointestinal system, the kidneys and the key hormonal mechanisms involved in regulating these systems.

You will also have opportunities to begin developing your Personal Excellence Path for your special interests in medicine. The activities in Years 1 and 2 support literature appraisal, academic writing, team-working and presentation skills.

From the beginning of Year 3 until the end of your final year, you will learn through immersion in clinical placements organised around our four Clinical Education Campuses in our University and their Associated Teaching Hospitals, in General Practices in Greater Manchester, the community and beyond. Limited time is spent on the University campus.

Your clinical practice will be supported by online cases and face-to-face themed cased discussions to develop your clinical knowledge, communication and decision-making skills. You will spend the majority of your week learning from real patients, applying basic scientific knowledge and clinical skills you acquired in the earlier years and demonstrating your growing professional acumen as a student doctor.

In Year 3 you will rotate through 5 clinical placements starting with a 4-week Introduction to Clinical Learning followed by experience in medical and surgical settings. Your clinical placements will afford the opportunity to not only learn to assess patients but understand how a health service works and practice clinical procedures necessary as a junior doctor.

Towards the end of the year, you will undertake the Applied Personal Excellence Pathway (APEP). This will give you the opportunity to carry out an original project involving, for example, basic or applied research, service evaluation, or educational development, supervised by a subject expert from the University or the NHS.

The final activity of the year will enable you to select a 4-week student selected career placement in an area of your clinical interest from within our Clinical Education Campuses. The placement will give you the time and opportunity to reflect on your future career choices within medicine.

Year 4 is structured to broaden your clinical learning and practice across 14 specialties, offering immersion in new clinical placements with supervision and teaching by expert clinicians.

There will be clinical placements in:

• general practice and clinical public health;
• mental health, neurology and special senses;
• musculoskeletal health;
• ageing and complex health;
• women's health;
• child health;
• oncology and breast health;
• dermatology and infectious diseases.

Medical Elective

The year will end with a student elective placement, commonly an overseas experience of medical practice in different healthcare system.

The final year of the course is focussed on preparing you for your final university exams, national assessments such as the Prescribing Safety Assessment, Medical Licencing Assessment and, for your role as a foundation year doctor in the NHS; this year is your preparation for practice.

Clinical placements will include further general medical and surgical placements, general practice and acute medicine. As a final year medical student, you will be appropriately supervised and integrated into a clinical department while you undertake most of the duties of a newly qualified doctor, including shift-working and being on-call.

You will also undertake a Quality and Evidence PEP to understand clinical audit and governance in healthcare and another opportunity to explore career choices through a second Student-Selected Clinical Placement.

Year 5 onwards

Currently, the NHS Business Services Authority pays the cost of undergraduate medicine tuition fees, and a means-tested amount of funding to help with day to day living expenses, to eligible students who are in their fifth year of study onwards and who are ordinarily resident in England.

If you move to England from Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland primarily for the purpose of undertaking a full-time course of education, you will not normally be classed as being ordinarily resident in England for NHS Bursary purposes.

If you reside in Wales , Scotland or Northern Ireland , broadly comparable arrangements will apply, but you will need to consult the relevant national authority for details as NHS Student Bursaries will not be able to administer your funding.

Visit our Student Finance pages to find out about the financial support that may be available to you.