The MBBS Program at the University of Adelaide provides students with state of the art education and training to enable them, as graduates, to practise medicine in the 21st Century. Over the last 15 years, the Faculty has devoted considerable time to reviewing the requirements of graduates to ensure that they will become effective modern medical practitioners and to develop and evaluate styles of learning and teaching that are best suited to producing such graduates. The outcome is a state of the art, integrated educational program. In addition to producing graduates who are fully competent to undertake an internship, a major aim of the curriculum is to make learning enjoyable and stimulating. It has been important and pleasing to see students so obviously enjoying themselves as they learn.

The three major streams of the course are the core elements of medical practice:

• Scientific Basis of Medicine
• Clinical Skills
• Medical Personal and Professional Development

These three streams form the basis of an integrated case-based program in Years 1-3. Throughout Years 4-6, students will expand their knowledge, experience and skills within these three streams as they undertake placements within the teaching hospitals and in the broader medical community.

For further information on Case-Based Learning (CBL), Community-Based Learning, The University of Adelaide Rural Clinical School and Academic Language and Learning in the Medicine Program please visit the Medicine Learning and Teaching Unit website.

Before being admitted to full registration as a medical practitioner in Australia, a medical graduate must serve at least twelve months as an intern in an approved hospital. After successfully completing the internship and obtaining full registration to practice, graduates have to make a career decision with respect to entering a postgraduate specialty (including general practice) training program offered by a professional college.

The wide range of medical career paths and options become apparent as students progress through the program.

Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery Graduate Attributes

All medical students will be registered with the The South Australian Board of the Medical Board of Australia, which has the responsibility of ensuring that all persons permitted to practise medicine in the State should be fit and proper persons who maintain appropriate professional standards.

Faculty of Health Sciences

• Medicine Program Information Leaflet
• Inherent Requirements for Medical Program
• Medicine Learning and Teaching Unit
• Faculty of Health Sciences
• Undergraduate Scholarships
• Medical Rural Bonded Scholarships
• University Contact Centre enquiry form
• Undergraduate Medicine & Health Sciences Admission Test
• Bonded Medical Places Scheme
• South Australian Board of the Medical Board of Australia

Advice to potential Medicine applicants

Medical training is a lengthy process, with at least eleven years of education and training before an individual is licensed to practise independently. Students need to be sure that they are committed to such an extended period of training, and that they will need to go on learning actively throughout their life to maintain competence and accreditation.

Medical training can be stressful as there is a lot to know and understand. The MBBS program will do all it can to make the undergraduate experience enjoyable and see that opportunities are provided to experience a wide range of learning opportunities. It is important to recognise that the approach in the MBBS program - with its emphasis on self-directed, CBL and on being able to understand and explain, also with a lesser emphasis on memorising facts and excessive detail - could be very different from the approach that students may have experienced prior to coming to University. Some students find that they need to make adjustments to their existing learning approaches to succeed in the MBBS program, and to be able to enjoy their undergraduate training and to prepare adequately for a satisfying career in medicine.

As students will be studying for many years in a relatively narrow field of interest, and dealing most of the time with people of similar interests, it is important that students make special arrangements to ensure that their personal development takes place concurrently. Students are encouraged to pursue interests outside Medicine and to meet students from other faculties.