Course overview

Medicine at Keele adopts a modern, spiral, highly integrated curriculum that combines a range of learning strategies, including early clinical experience, integrated communication and clinical skills teaching, practical activities (including dissection), problem-based learning (PBL), lectures and seminars. Additionally, inter-professional learning with other health students, including nursing, midwifery, paramedic science, physiotherapy and radiography, is fostered throughout the programme.

We are committed to listening to, responding to and supporting our students to become well-rounded, competent clinicians. Through forums such as our Medical Student Council, we recognise the value of our students' contribution to development and progression of our curriculum and the student experience.

Key course content

To ensure you graduate as a confident and competent clinician, you will study a range of topics including:

• Professional and ethical responsibilities
• Patient safety and quality improvement
• Diagnosis and medical management
• Prescribing medication safely
• The health service and healthcare systems
• Health promotion and illness prevention

Foundation Year

Our Foundation Year provides an excellent alternative route to Keele, providing a unique opportunity to better prepare for your chosen degree, and with guaranteed entry onto your undergraduate course once you successfully complete your Foundation Year.

This extra year of study can improve your academic skills, expand your subject knowledge, give you a better understanding of higher education and, perhaps most importantly of all, build your confidence.

Keele University is consistently ranked among the top universities for student satisfaction, and we have over 70 years' experience of teaching a foundation year to students. On the Keele Foundation Year, you'll study on campus, joining our undergraduate community from the outset, with access to all the facilities and support that you'd get as an undergraduate student at Keele.

Clinical placements

You will have 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. We are committed to providing you with 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, you will be encouraged to think of community and social dimensions of illness and health throughout your academic studies and placements.

You will have 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 we use are schools, workplaces, residential homes and drop-in centres, to name but a few: all places that contribute to the health and care of people.

Your future career

Graduates of our undergraduate medical degree have gone on to pursue careers spanning a diverse range of specialities, from forensic pathologist to psychiatrist, GP to cardiothoracic surgeon. Our integrated curriculum and emphasis on the application of your learning means you are well-equipped to explore a career within a speciality aligned to your aspirations.

The General Medical Council (GMC) approves your university’s degree as a primary medical qualification (PMQ). This is important because, provided there are no concerns about your fitness to practise, a PMQ entitles you to provisional registration with the GMC for a licence to practise medici