Course summary

Ulster University is opening its Graduate Entry Medical School for 2021 entry, a unique development in medical education in Northern Ireland. This 4-year course is open to graduates from a wide range of science and non-science backgrounds. You will be part of a cohort of students that have a wide range of experience and skills, making this an exciting and stimulating entry route into the medical profession. Upon graduation you will be awarded a primary medical qualification, an MBBS degree, which enables you to start work as a medical practitioner in the United Kingdom. At the time of writing, you will be eligible to enter the UK Foundation Programme, but with the planned introduction of the UK Medical Licensing Examination in 2024, the requirement for the UK Foundation Programme might have changed. The award of the final degree by Ulster University will be subject to satisfying the GMC’s rigorous quality assurance programme. In the unlikely event that Ulster did not satisfy the GMC’s rigorous quality assurance programme the final degree would be awarded by our partner Medical School, St George’s, University of London. Entry onto this course will require you to make a substantial commitment to study medicine but with commitment, motivation and hard work comes a lifetime’s reward. The care of patients as a doctor requires a broad approach which includes a sound understanding of biomedical and social sciences, and the ability to provide genuine care for the whole patient: therefore applicants with non-science backgrounds bring unique and important skills and experience to bear both to their studies and their eventual care of patients. The course is an intense full-time four year programme leading to an MBBS degree, recognised by the General Medical Council as a Primary Medical Qualification in the UK. We are delighted to be working with St George’s University of London as our partner medical school. St George’s has a long established reputation for delivering world-class medical education and has run a highly acclaimed Graduate Entry medical programme for many years. Throughout the journey of the first cohort of students, we will be working closely with the GMC and St Georges to provide our students with the very best medical education; ensuring that they emerge as competent, caring, capable doctors. If you have a minimum of a 2.1 honours degree in any subject, are willing to work hard and want to know more about what it means to study medicine and become a doctor; then come along to our open days. There, you will have an opportunity to speak to us to find out more about being a doctor, what graduate entry medicine entails, and about how you can prepare for our admissions process. You will need to sit the GAMSAT test and undertake a Multiple Mini Interview process to demonstrate that you have the personal qualities required of a doctor. Studying medicine with us will provide you with an intensely practical medical education. Ulster’s MBBS programme will have a problem-based and interdisciplinary learning focus to enable you to graduate not only demonstrating that you meet all the GMC ‘Outcomes for Graduates’; but that you are fully prepared to work as a member of an integrated health and social care team with a strong community focus, even for patients cared for by hospital specialists. You will benefit from access to practice learning placements across the full range of medical specialist subjects, significant opportunities for primary care-based experience, and knowledge and appreciation of the inter connectivity between primary, secondary, social and community-based healthcare. Northern Ireland is facing an unprecedented medical workforce shortage that will continue to impact negatively on the care of patients, their families and communities. A new medical school will help to ease the workforce challenges and future proof our health service; and you can be part of this solution.