Monash University

Program

The Bachelor of Medical Science / Doctor of Medicine is a 4-year graduate-entry degree designed for students who have completed their undergraduate studies and are prepared to enter professional training to become a doctor. Course content emphasizes clinical communication skills and early clinical contact visits to medical practices, community care facilities, and hospitals.

Year A
You will complete your first year of study, Year A (pre-clinical year), at the School of Rural Health, which is located at the Gippsland campus of Federation University Australia in Churchill, Victoria. The remainder of the Monash graduate-entry medicine clinical years can be undertaken in Metropolitan Melbourne or in regional Victoria clinical sites if students so wish. You will have regular visits to the Clayton campus (approx. 20 km from downtown Melbourne) as part of your studies. Interdisciplinary units introduce the basic medical and behavioural sciences of anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, immunology, microbiology, pathology, pharmacology, physiology, and psychology, together with sociology of health, clinical skills, ethics, and medical law. After completion of the first year, you’ll progress into Year 3B.

Years 3B, 4C, 5D
Years 3 – 5 of the course are conducted in clinical settings, generally in hospitals and practices in metropolitan Melbourne, rural southeastern Victoria or rural northwest Victoria. You’ll spend around 40 hours per week working at a clinical site. This will provide you with time for self-directed study and the opportunity to be in control of your own learning to develop skills in problem-solving and the critical appraisal of information.

In Year 3B, you’ll be placed within Monash teaching hospitals. The emphasis moves towards multi-system disease representations that will form the core of the learning in integrated medicine and surgery.

In Year 4C clinical teaching builds upon and reinforces this strong foundation through the core clinical rotations of women’s and children’s health, general practice, and medicine of the mind (psychiatry).

The fourth and final year, Year 5D, features several clinical placements (or rotations). These rotations take place in both community and hospital settings. One of the rotations is an elective placement, where you’ll complete your degree by gaining wider experience in chosen disciplines and specific areas of interest.

Course Themes

This combined medical degree offers an integrated curriculum, taught in an interdisciplinary fashion around four broad themes and in a wide range of learning environments, both on-campus and in clinical settings.

Theme I: Personal and Professional Development
The course develops through theme studies in personal and professional development; population, society, health, and illness; scientific basis of clinical practice; and clinical skills, all of which come together in professional practice demonstrated in the clinical placement units.

Theme II: Population, Society, Health, and Illness
The focus of these studies is the social, environmental, and behavioural contexts of illness and the practice of medicine, especially in rural and remote areas. Broad societal issues are also covered, including health promotion, epidemiology, public health, community diversity, population and global health. You will also study the history and philosophy of the scientific approach to medicine, and approaches to knowledge and information, and hence develop a sound understanding of evidence-based medicine.

Theme III: Scientific Basis of Clinical Practice
These studies address human systems, and through them you will develop the knowledge and concepts that underpin both the basic medical sciences and in the clinical sciences.

Theme IV: Clinical Skills
This theme encompasses the whole range of clinical skills and will develop defined clinical competencies. This will begin with clinical aspects of communication skills and move through history taking and physical examinations to the more advanced clinical and procedural skills.

You will experience an interdisciplinary curriculum, organized to provide integration of structure and function within the biomedical sciences. The program presents a continually expanding level of medical experience, starting in the first semester of the course. In the early years, the basic medical sciences are taught in the context of their relevance to patient care. Later in the course, clinical teaching builds upon and reinforces this strong scientific foundation.

Clinical Placements
An emphasis on clinical communication skills and early clinical contact visits to medical practices, community care facilities and hospitals is a feature of the Monash medical degree. You will spend significant time in rural areas as part of a health-care team.

The School of Rural Health Churchill features a sophisticated clinical simulations centre and state-of-the-art clinical training facilities at the Latrobe Regional hospital, Warragul, Sale and Bairnsdale hospitals and GP learning centres across west, central, south, and east Gippsland.