The five-year Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (BMBS) programme draws on the strength of our partnership with the NHS in Devon and Cornwall to provide a unique learning experience in healthcare. It develops skills for lifelong learning and the professional attitudes that you will need throughout your medical career. The importance of a multi-professional perspective is a key component.
The curriculum provides a clinical focus that is patient-centred, forward-thinking and meets the needs of students who want to work as doctors in an increasingly integrated, internationalised health environment. It also includes the whole health community, not just hospitals. This recognises the community role in chronic illness and prevention and provides the social context, giving you a wider perspective and understanding.
For your first year, you will be based at the St Luke’s Campus, Exeter and experience university life to the full. You will learn core biomedical and psychosocial concepts within clinical context, alongside clinical placement experiences and clinical skills training.
In the second year you will further develop your core biomedical, psychological, sociological and population health knowledge on one of our main medical school campuses, in a more integrated and further contextualised manner, increasing your range of clinical skills and placements.
In the third year, you will commence Clinical Pathways 1 at one of our secondary care NHS Trust sites. Your learning will be patient-centred and you will rotate through a series of hospital and community placements across either Devon or Cornwall.
Clinical Pathways 2 is undertaken in your fourth year and will provide extensive experience of a wide range of clinical settings throughout either Devon or Cornwall, further increasing your clinical knowledge and skills particularly through an increasing range of clinical specialities.
In your final year, you will learn the job of medicine and start to develop your own clinical practice in preparation for graduation. You’ll undertake a series of apprenticeship attachments in NHS hospitals across the South West. At this stage you will have developed the personal and learning skills required to analyse and evaluate patients’ conditions and to suggest forms of clinical management. You’ll also take a Student-Selected Elective which may involve clinical or research placements, or a combination of both. Many students take this opportunity to see the practice of medicine in another part of the world.
