The Curriculum

• Course Structure
• The MBBS Curriculum at UOW
• The Curriculum Phases

Course structure

The GSM's MBBS course is a four-year program, with each academic year being approximately 42 weeks in length. Students should expect to participate in 15-20 hrs of structured and 20-30 hours of self-directed teaching and learning experiences each week.

Participation in scheduled small group learning activities, clinical skills laboratories, anatomy laboratories and clinical placements are an integral part of each student's learning. As the course progresses there is increasing reliance upon on-line delivery of the structured learning activities that complement learning experiences in the clinical environment.

On completion of the four-year MBBS, all graduates must undertake one year of pre-registration training as interns at hospitals and other appropriate facilities in Australia. Graduates who satisfactorily complete pre-registration training will qualify as Registered Medical Practitioners in Australia and New Zealand.

The MBBS Curriculum at UOW

The GSM curriculum reflects the latest approach to medical education, and incorporates extensive use of existing and emerging medical education and information technologies.

The medical course in Wollongong is clinically led and provides students with the opportunity to start developing their clinical skills from the first year. It is designed around common and important clinical conditions and uses an integrated learning and teaching approach that relates clinical medicine to the underlying medical sciences. The course is organized into themes that run throughout the course. These are Clinical Competencies, Medical Sciences, Personal & Professional Development, and Research & Critical Analysis.

A combination of approaches to learning are used to deliver the curriculum including clinical teaching in hospitals, clinics, and general practice surgeries; large and small group clinical presentations; seminars; tutorials; small group work; on-line activities; and human anatomy laboratory dissection. In addition the curriculum includes activities directed at the personal and professional development of GSM students.

The Curriculum Phases

The curriculum is divided into four consecutive phases, each phase involving a progressive increase in the depth of study and skills acquisition in Clinical Competencies, underpinning Medical Sciences, Personal & Professional Development, and Research & Critical Analysis skills.

At the centre of the four year curriculum are 93 clinical problems. For each of these largely symptom-based core clinical problems there are many possible diagnoses which reflect the range of conditions likely to be seen by a newly qualified doctor. Students will make increasing use of these problems as a "blueprint" to guide the range and depth of learning they need to achieve by the end of the MBBS degree.

Medical Sciences

The Medical Sciences component of the course underpins the clinical problems. All science learning and teaching is integrated with clinical medicine.

Rather than having separate "subjects" such as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, population health or behavioral science, these content areas are woven into the clinical problems that are the focus of the course delivery within each week or fortnight-long component of the degree.

Clinical Competencies

From the very start of the course students develop their abilities in listening to patients, in examining them, in reaching a diagnosis, in formulating a treatment plan and in being able to perform a range of practical procedures. In addition, students become more aware of the interpersonal skills and professional behaviours needed to work as a member of a health care team. A step-wise approach to learning clinical and communication skills will be assisted by the use of volunteer patients, trained actors, and a range of models for practicing procedural skills.

Personal and Professional Development

The course includes a significant focus on the interface between personal development and professional functioning, with structured assessable learning activities designed to foster reflective practice, commitment to life-long learning, aid understanding of ethical, scientific and philosophical principles underlying the practice of medicine. These activities include the development of a relationship with a mentor who will become a consistent figure in each student's professional development.

The Personal and Professional Development curriculum, is informed by research evidence, and the programme itself carefully evaluated.

Research and Critical Analysis

This part of the course helps students develop the knowledge and skills to conduct research, evaluate evidence and use it as the basis for their practice of Medicine.

Integrated Learning Activities

Integrated Learning Activities (ILAs) occur regularly throughout the course and have been designed to allow students to integrate their learning in Clinical Competencies and Medical Sciences. Typically, each ILA starts with a patient presenting problems to the student. After the presentation, students work in small groups to identify what they need to study in order to understand and manage the patient's problems. In the early years of the degree, students meet with a tutor during the ILA to further define the knowledge they require to analyse the patient's problem. Learning is facilitated by the related topics delivered in lectures, laboratory and skills centre sessions, on-line learning and personal study.

In later years of the degree, the ILA methods are supplemented by related learning activities such as the Clinico-Pathological Conference delivered within both the university environment (face to face and on-line) and the hospital or clinical environment.

Last reviewed: 12 May, 2008