How is the Medical course at Newcastle University structured?

I am looking into applying to Newcastle and I know they use a 'case-led' approach. But can I please know what that entails exactly and how different it is from pbl/integrated? So how often are lectures, do you have regular small group seminars, exams etc.

Thanks a lot :smile:

Reply 1

SilverArch

I'm coming to the end of my third year at Newcastle now, I don't know if there have been any changes in lower years but for us:

The course is structured into 2 phases, like it says on the website (2 years/3 years)

Lectures were nearly every day, it's a lecture heavy course for the first two years. This is alongside anatomy lab sessions (prosection), clinical skillls sessions, computer based sessions and seminar groups (in terms of small, there were about 20 people per group), but lectures will be what you do more than anything else. Definitely not like PBL. In the whole first two years, I did 5 hospital visits and 5 GP visits, some of which were half days, along with a few visits per year to the family/patient for the study, and one extra hospital day in second year doing a clinical experience day. Whereas a girl who had been in my year at secondary school, was at a different med school going to a GP surgery every single week IIRC.

Case led = you get an example 'case' about a patients illness/experience of something, which is a few pages long (written up in a booklet you get) for every section/topic of the course you do. Topics such as "Life Cycle", or "Cardiovascular, Respiratory and Renal Medicine". You can read the case (or not!), and your topic starts with a case launch lecture to introduce you to the material. Your lectures and other sessions are on this topic (though you'll always have at least 2, usually 3 topics on the go at any one time) and might include reference to the case, depending upon the lecture/person giving it. But actually often the case didn't get mentionned much after the first lecture or so. Case led is basically an attempt to relate all the sciencey lectures to actual clinical practice, given there's not a lot of clinical in the first two years. Minds on the eventual application of learning all this. How succcessful that is I'm not so sure, especially when the lecturer looks around, asks "who's read the case?" and gets a majority 'Uuuuhhhhh' in response.

Then you get a real change, into full on clinical years, I've not been into the medical school building all year for any sessions, I've been in a GP surgery or hospital 100% of the time. The year group (which is over 300 as Newcastle and Durham are now combined) is split between various hospitals in four different 'base units'. All teaching takes place in the individual hospital's education centre, so there's no more anatomy sessions, or computer lab sessions. It's lectures (very few big lectures since christmas though), small group teaching sessions, group work, clinical skills with patients coming into the education centre, and being on the wards/in clinics/in theatre etc. GP is a half day every Wedesday.

Exams (In December and at the end of the year), are an OSCE plus 2 computer marked multiple choice papers (which are really one paper split into two parts because it would be too much to do all the questions in one go). The MCQ's cover all the topics from anatomy to ethics to the basic science unlike other med schools which have seperate exams for seperate topics. Also, in first year you do the Family Study (Patient Study in second year) and for this you have to produce one longer essay based on the family/patient you visit, and one shorter social science essay. You have to pass that Study to pass the year, along with the OSCE, the MCQ paper and the Professionalism component (ie. your attendance, your manner with patients, your ability to turn things in on time, turn up to lab with your lab coat, carry your university ID card around with you etc).

HTH

How is the Medical course at Newcastle University structured?

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