Graduate Entry Medicine

Course aims

Our medical course aims:

• to equip students with the essential personal and professional skills required throughout the rest of their course and in their future careers
• to integrate the basic and clinical sciences throughout the course
• to cultivate in students an attitude of curiosity and a desire for intellectual exploration and critical evaluation.

A patient-centred approach

The underlying philosophy of the curriculum is that all learning and teaching should be thought of from the perspective of the patient. A medical curriculum should include what a student needs to know, understand and be able to do in response to the problems presented by patients in a range of health care settings. To achieve this the Sheffield medical course is designed around answering the following questions:

• How should I talk to this patient?
• What affects and guides our relationship?
• Why do they think they're ill?
• Why is the patient ill?
• Is the illness part of a pattern?
• How do I know my advice is the best?

To answer these successfully, students must develop skills and understanding in:

• Communication and interpersonal relationships
• Patients' perceptions
• Biology of disease
• Epidemiology and Public Health
• Evidence-based medicine

Clinically led learning

The medical course in Sheffield is clinically-led and gives students opportunities to start developing their clinical skills from the very start. It is designed around the common and important clinical conditions and uses an integrated learning and teaching approach that relates clinical medicine to the underlying medical sciences.

Course themes

The two main themes that run throughout the course, Clinical Competencies and Medical Sciences are linked together by Integrated Learning Activities where students work in teams, and later in the course by themselves, to solve clinical problems. A combination of teaching approaches, including clinical teaching on the wards in hospitals, in clinics both in general practice and hospitals, lectures, seminars, tutorials, small group work, dissection, together with professionalism and patient safety training supported by experienced tutors and personal mentors helps ensure that graduates are well prepared for work in the National Health Service.

Primary medical qualification (PMQ)

At the end of the undergraduate programme you'll receive your degree. The General Medical Council (GMC) approves your university's degree as a primary medical qualification (PMQ). This is important because, provided there are no concerns about your fitness to practise, a PMQ from a UK university entitles you to provisional registration with the GMC for a licence to practise medicine in the UK.

Medical licensing assessment (MLA)

The GMC is introducing a Medical Licensing Assessment. The MLA will create a demonstration that anyone obtaining registration with a licence to practice medicine in the UK has met a common threshold for safe practice.  To obtain a PMQ, graduates from 2024 onwards will need to have a degree that includes a pass in both parts of the MLA. One part will be a test of applied knowledge (the AKT), set by the GMC and held at your medical school.  The other will be an assessment of your clinical and professional skills delivered by your medical school (the CPSA). Each School's CPSA must meet GMC-set quality assurance requirements. The MLA will test what doctors are likely to encounter in early practice and what's essential for safe practice. It intentionally will not cover the whole of a medical school curriculum. So, you will also need to meet your university's degree requirements. You can find out more about the MLA for UK students at www.gmc-uk.org/mla.

Foundation year one

Provisional registration is time limited to a maximum of three years and 30 days (1125 days in total).  After this time period your provisional registration will normally expire. Provisionally registered doctors can only practise in approved Foundation Year One posts: the law does not allow provisionally registered doctors to undertake any other type of work.  To obtain a Foundation Year One post you will need to apply during the final year of your undergraduate programme through the UK Foundation Programme Office selection scheme, which allocates these posts to graduates on a competitive basis. All suitably qualified UK graduates have found a place on the Foundation Year One programme, but this cannot be guaranteed, for instance if there were to be an increased number of competitive applications from non-UK graduates.

Full registration

Successful completion of the Foundation Year One programme is normally achieved within 12 months and is marked by the award of a Certificate of Experience. You will then be eligible to apply for full registration with the General Medical Council. You need full registration with a licence to practise for unsupervised medical practice in the NHS or private practice in the UK.

There is some discussion about whether to remove provisional registration for newly qualified doctors. If this happens then UK graduates will receive full registration as soon as they have successfully completed an MBChB (or equivalent) degree. It should be noted that it is very likely that UK graduates will still need to apply for a training programme similar to the current Foundation Programme and that places on this programme may not be guaranteed for every UK graduate.

Learning

You will learn through clinical teaching on wards in hospitals, clinics (both in general practice and in hospitals), lectures, seminars, tutorials, small group work, dissection and personal development supported by experienced teachers and personal academic tutors. We aim to ensure you're well prepared for a career in medicine.