Medicine (MBChB Hons)

Program Overview

Through a spiral curriculum, students develop clinical expertise through extensive placements and research opportunities. The program prepares graduates for a wide range of medical specialties and provides support for career development and employability.

Program Outline

• Underpinned by the three core themes identified by the General Medical Council: Professional Values and Behaviours, Professional Skills, and Professional Knowledge (GMC, 2018).
• Ranked 4th in England (Guardian University League Table, 2022).
• You will develop the necessary knowledge and clinical skills to become a doctor who practices with competence and compassion.

Outline

Spiral curriculum:

• Revisits core topics, building on your knowledge as you progress through the degree.

Year 1:

• Covers health and disease, infection and immunity, emergencies, lifecourse, brain and mind, pregnancy, and lifestyle.

Year 2:

• Focuses on biomedical, behavioural and social science, with increasing emphasis on complexity and pathology.
• Includes units such as mechanisms of disease, inputs and outputs, movement and trauma, circulation, breath of life and integrated systems.

Years 3 and 4:

• Builds on the foundations of clinical knowledge and skills through immersion in clinical placements, while continuing to develop and apply biomedical, behavioural and social science knowledge.
• Covers topics such as medicine, surgery, elderly care, mental health, paediatrics, and a general practice clinical placement.
• Revisits many of these topics in Year 4 but will also cover women's health, neurology, and musculoskeletal systems.

Final year (Year 5):

• Prepares you for professional practice as a foundation year 1 doctor.
• You will undertake extensive student assistantships including:
• Out of hours evening and weekend working
• General practice
• Acute and critical care (including emergency medicine, intensive care and anaesthesia)
• Medicine and surgery

Scholarship and student-selected components (SSCs):

• Opportunities to learn about how medical knowledge develops through research, and to focus on particular areas of interest in medical science, clinical medicine or public health in greater depth.

Clinical placements:

• Extensive experience of clinical placements in both primary and secondary care settings and in the non-NHS community sector ("third sector").
• Clinical placements will take place across Staffordshire, Shropshire and other adjoining counties.
• Opportunities to build your awareness of the health and wellbeing of a variety of demographics to strengthen your appreciation of the wider determinants of health, such as socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions.
• Beginning in Year 1, encouraged to think of community and social dimensions of illness and health throughout your academic studies and placements.
• Placements with community services and general practices in Years 1 and 2, and over 20% of teaching in Years 3, 4 and 5 takes place in general practice.
• Examples of other community services used: schools, workplaces, residential homes and drop-in centers.

Assessment

Utilized a range of assessment modes:

• Appropriate to assess each of the intended learning objectives of the programme.
• In every year all domains will be summatively assessed using appropriate assessment methods.

Assessment methods include:

• Written knowledge examinations:
• Examines knowledge in a range of formats designed to test students' ability to apply relevant scientific and medical knowledge to professional practice.
• Includes single best answer (SBA) and short answer question (SAQ) exams.
• From Summer 2024, our written knowledge assessments will include the GMC's Applied Knowledge Test (AKT), sat at the end of Year 4 of the programme.
• Practical examinations:
• Enable you to demonstrate safe and effective clinical practice.
• Include objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) and a variety of workplace-based assessments (WBAs).
• From 2025, such examinations will form the GMCs Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA).
• In-course assignments:
• Test your ability to apply a range of professional attributes, including your reflective practice and presentation skills.
• Methods include written reviews, case reports, and poster presentations.

Teaching

Aims to make learning enjoyable:

• Through small class sizes, small group learning and early clinical experience.
• Will support you to develop into highly competent and self-aware medical professionals.

Teaching methods:

• Clinical placements
• Problem/case-based learning
• Lectures
• Anatomy and laboratory practicals
• Experiential learning

Problem-based learning (PBL):

• A major component of the Keele MBChB curriculum in Years 1 and 2.
• You will work in small groups to study written descriptions of clinical situations.
• Using a specific set of study skills, you will use scenarios to guide you towards relevant theoretical and practical learning.
• Normally, each scenario is the focus for learning for a week, with two tutorials devoted to it.
• From Year 3 onwards PBL develops into case-based and case-illustrated learning, where the written scenarios are augmented using discussions of patients encountered by students in their clinical placements.
• The PBL programme is supported by a variety of methods which include: plenary lectures, seminars, laboratory practical classes, and a wide variety of placement experiences in primary and secondary care.

Careers

95% of Keele students are in employment or further study within 15 months of finishing their studies:

• Graduates of the undergraduate medical degree have gone on to pursue careers spanning a diverse range of specialities, from forensic pathologist to psychiatrist, GP to cardiothoracic surgeon.
• The General Medical Council (GMC) approves your university’s degree as a primary medical qualification (PMQ).
• In order to practice medicine in the UK, you will be required to pass the Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA).
• The MLA is in two parts: the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT), which you will sit as your final knowledge exam in the Keele MBChB programme, and the Clinical & Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA), which you will sit as your final skills assessment.
• Successfully completing the degree will therefore mean you have also completed the MLA.
• You will also sit a national Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) in year 5.
• Provisionally registered doctors can only practice in approved Foundation Year 1 posts, obtained through the national application process during the final year of the course.
• Successful completion of the programme is normally achieved within 12 months and awards a Certificate of Experience.
You need this and a license to practice unsupervised medical practice in the UK for both NHS and private practice.

Enhance your employability:

• Keele’s Careers and Employability team (Shortlisted for Best University Careers Employment Service - National Undergraduate Employability Awards, 2021), offers a variety of personal and career development opportunities to enhance your employability.
• You will receive support with UK Foundation Programme applications and will build up a portfolio throughout the course to support subsequent medical job applications.

UK: £9250 International: £45,100