A parent’s guide to studying medicine

My son has just started his fifth and final year of studying medicine at a British university. In a year’s time, he will be starting work as a doctor.

A lot of medicine students come from medical families, so the degree isn’t unfamiliar to them. We have no doctors in our family, so my son and I have been learning as we go along about exactly what happens when you study medicine.

There are so many differences between medicine and other degree courses. I thought it would be useful to share what we’ve learned along the way, for any other parents whose child is either thinking of studying medicine or has just started at medical school.

This information isn’t intended to replace anything you might find on the university or NHS websites, it is just a general guide to the things I believe other parents might find useful.

While there is some variation between exactly how they cover the curriculum, every university with a medicine course is approved by the General Medical Council to award degrees in medicine. They are all training students to take the first steps as doctors, so the courses will be similar.

Applying for medicine at university

I look at this in more depth in this post. But the first thing to say is there is no point in a child applying for medicine if they are predicted Bs or below in A Level. They also need to be studying chemistry A Level. Some universities will also require biology A Level. Most will require chemistry, plus either biology, physics or maths. A typical offer for medicine is A* A A at A Level.

Students will also need to sit an aptitude test – UCAT or BMAT depending on the individual university requirements – before they apply. All students will have an interview before being offered a place at university to study medicine.

Days, weeks, terms, holidays

For most degrees, students might only have lectures for two to four hours a day and might have a day or two off a week. The holidays are long.

That is not the case with medicine. With medicine, the days are long, the weeks are full and the holidays are shorter. Medicine students can expect to do full days every day, with no days off in the week. Typically, their terms will finish later than others and they will go back earlier – for example finishing only a week before Christmas, finishing in early July for summer and going back straight after August bank holiday.

Unless they live with other medics, medicine can expect to spend several weeks a year on their own in their student houses.

Exams and marks

Assessment is by a mixture of exams and coursework, including some group projects. Exams typically take place just after Christmas and again in late spring/ early summer.

Students need to average over 50% in a particular area of the curriculum to pass the exam/ year. No mark within that should be below 40%. One set of resits is offered in summer for anyone who fails an exam. If they fail their resits, they are sadly off the course, unless they have extenuating circumstances (something like serious illness themselves or a parent dying), in which case they can resit the year.

In medicine, there no firsts, 2:1s etc like there are in other degrees. The only exception is distinction awarded to students whose marks are all over 75% (this is quite rare).

Clinical years

A medicine student will generally spend the first two years in university (medical school) full-time (with maybe one GP placement for a day a week every other week). This is where they do all their background learning.

The next three years are the clinical years – when they spend nearly all their time in hospitals. They will have the occasional week or day in medical school, but apart from that, they will be in hospitals. They won’t just be on the wards and in clinics, they will spend some time being taught in the hospital.

They will rotate around different areas of medicine in fairly short blocks, so they cover most things. The number of areas of medicine there are is incredible to the layperson. They won’t repeat anything, so it is important that they fully concentrate on their third year placements, as that is the only time they will do them!

Every year, medicine students have to carry out certain procedures and have them signed off – things like doing a blood test, inserting a canula and inserting a catheter.

Some medical schools (like Keele) will just send students to the same hospital for an entire year. Others (like University of Birmingham) will send them to a huge range of hospitals – from Hereford in the south to hospitals in the wider West Midlands. A placement at Hereford (and no doubt similar hospitals at other universities) comes with free accommodation, but other hospitals require a very early start and long and challenging commute – two buses with long walks either side is not unusual. It’s not surprising that a lot of medicine students have cars and give lifts to their fellow students.

GP surgery

Most students will do GP placements throughout their time at medical school – starting with a day every other week in first and second year. As they near the end of the course, they will start working like a real GP.

In my son’s experience, he worked in a small group in fourth year. They had their own clinic and saw patients – one would take the lead and the others would observe and chip in if needed. They would then swap places with another student taking the lead for the next patient. They would decide what they thought was wrong and what treatment was needed, then run their thoughts by a GP, who would confirm if they were right.

In fifth year, they work on their own, with no other students in the room. Again, they run their thoughts and observations by a GP. Students are unable to prescribe.

If I can be allowed a proud mum moment for a second… In fifth year, the staff at the GP surgery where my son had his placement thought he was more like an F2 (second year doctor) than a fifth year student.

Funding

Medicine students get the same funding as all other students for the first four years, if they choose to take it. They get loans to cover their tuition and a means-tested maintenance loan from Student Finance England. After the first four years (which is usually just the fifth and final year, but could be an extra year if they’ve had to repeat a year or chose to do an additional, intercalated degree), they are funded by the NHS for both their tuition and their maintenance.

Unfortunately, the maintenance loan from the NHS is a bit lower than what they would get from SFE. For the academic year 2026/27, my son’s loan (the lowest level) was just £1,050 for the year. It’s not easy for medicine students to have part-time jobs as their degree is so much more full-on than others, but if they are able to earn some money in the holidays, it would make sense to put some aside to help with funding their final year.

But the NHS does pay travel in the final year (see below!).

Travel

Medicine students need to travel for their placements. For the third and fourth years, the university will give them an allowance to cover their travel costs. Depending on how far they have to travel, the allowance will probably not be quite enough.

But in fifth year (or specifically all years after fourth year, I believe), the NHS will cover all reasonable travel costs – including trains, if they’re slightly more expensive than buses. So if a student needs to get a train and a bus to placement, that will be covered.

They also get allowances for cycling, driving and giving lifts to other students.

F1 and F2

In the August after graduating, your medicine student will start work as a Foundation 1 (F1) doctor. A year later, they will become an F2 doctor. They are still training and learning at this point, working on the Foundation Programme, which is two years of postgraduate medical training. They will complete the programme before going on to specialist or general practice (GP) training. Each year of the Foundation Programme will consist of three different areas of medicine.

Graduates don’t apply for their F1 and F2 placements, they are allocated them based on their preferences. The UK is divided into 18 areas (‘deaneries’). At the start of fifth year, medicine students have to rank all the deaneries in order of preference. This is a chance to work close to home or their university town or alternatively to work somewhere completely new and different. But if their top choice is a popular one which is oversubscribed, they risk being placed in an unpopular area for two years.

 

There is a lot to consider when studying medicine, far more than with other degrees. I hope this whistle stop tour through some of the main points has helped parents whose children are thinking of studying medicine or just starting their medicine degrees.