I'm not sure what the link is with Newcastle/Durham (having never studied, or wanted to study medicine), but I did Biomed at Newcastle, and we had about 10 intercalated students in our optional modules. They were absolutly awful (sounds so harsh) because all they were interested in was trying to get their dissertation published rather than any of the module work, which was fair enough... but we had to do group work with them, and the grade massively affected our degree classification!