Course description

The MBChB with Foundation Year is aimed at students who wish to study Medicine at the University of Leicester, but whose background makes it less likely that they will be able to meet the entry requirements for our standard five-year MBChB. Successful completion of the integrated Foundation Year will enable you to progress onto the first year of the MBChB course.

We are looking to attract aspirational students, from all backgrounds, who display a caring attitude and values consistent with those of the NHS constitution. We aim to help you become skilled, professional and empathic doctors prepared to make patient care your first priority.

The first part of the Foundation Year is taught alongside Biological Science students before moving into Medicine-specific modules later in the year. You will meet patients and learn clinical skills during your foundation year. The course is designed to enable you to take forward the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that are required to practise medicine effectively and successfully in the modern healthcare environment. You will be prepared for the challenges that we are experiencing today and the inevitable changes in practice that will continue to occur in the future.

A pioneering and unique aspect of the Medicine with Foundation Year its bespoke empathy-focused curriculum. Our innovative course fosters your clinical empathy right from the very start of your training. You will learn through a person-centred approach to medicine with the understanding that empathy is a core value that will be central to your future practice. This is important because we know that treating people with empathy improves their experience of healthcare and is beneficial to practitioners too.

As a Foundation Year student, you will join our medical school community alongside other medical students. 2025 will mark our 50th anniversary, so we have plenty of experience of medical education at Leicester, which means that you will benefit from excellent training in an established, supportive environment. Throughout the course, you will learn from expert academics and medical practitioners working day-to-day in the NHS.

Once you complete the Foundation Year, you will join our five-year medical course. We run an integrated curriculum, meaning teaching and learning is based around patients and their needs. It is not a problem-based learning course, but rather a patient-focused curriculum which is delivered through a mixture of lectures, small group work, cadaveric dissection, and clinical teaching. This ensures that you learn the essential science underpinning how the human body operates, whilst learning how things can go wrong through the study of patients.

Your experience will be hands-on - you will work with real patients from the beginning. It's all designed to be clinically relevant - enabling you to acquire the medical knowledge, along with the professional competencies, that are essential to practise medicine effectively. In your first year following the Foundation Year, you gain the Health Care Certificate and hospital ward experience that allows you to work as a Healthcare Assistant. Simultaneously, through our Phase 1 Compassionate, Holistic, Diagnostic Detective course you start to develop consultation and examinations skills with actors and patients in our medical school and hospitals, preparing you for Phase 2 (years 3-5) where you will be based full-time in hospital, general practice and community placements.

Our world-class facilities provide a state-of-the art learning environment and allow you to experience what other medical students don’t. For example, we are one of the few courses to offer full-body human dissection. All first year students are provided with iPads. Study material is delivered directly onto these iPads. All the resources you need will be at your fingertips throughout the clinical phase of the course.

You will also have the chance to develop your clinical procedures in our state-of-the-art Clinical Skills Unit. During the clinical phase of the course, we offer a wide range of hospital and community placements in the region, including Leicester’s big city hospitals, and district centres across the Midlands, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. This means you gain valuable experience in a diverse range of environments.

If you’re interested in medical research and/or enhancing your career prospects, you can take an intercalated degree by undertaking full-time research with experts at Leicester or elsewhere.

Towards the end of the course, there are additional opportunities to take an elective placement in a location of your choice - it could be anywhere in the world. 

National Student Survey results

We are really proud to have some of the most satisfied medical students in the UK. Our outstanding teaching and learning environment was reflected in our National Student Survey (NSS) 2024 results, where we were ranked 1st in the UK in subjects aligned to Medicine for overall positivity. (According to Times Higher Education NSS 2023 methodology applied to the NSS 2024 data.)

We also ranked 1st or 2nd in subjects aligned to Medicine on question themes concerning ‘Student Voice’, ‘Teaching on my Course’, Assessment and Feedback’, ‘Learning Opportunities’, and ‘Organisation and Management’.

And as a Medical School, which therefore teaches vocational degrees, we are especially proud of being ranked top in subjects aligned to Medicine on the question “How well has your course developed your knowledge and skills that you think you will need for your future?”

The 2024 NSS comprised 27 core questions covering academic experience, teaching and assessments, and well-being services. It was completed by almost 346,000 final year students in the UK and gives feedback on their university experience. This is a fantastic result and a huge testament to the way staff and students collaborate at Leicester Medical School to make it such a great place to study medicine. However, being a great medical school depends on us not settling for how we are now but also striving to be even better in the future, and we continue to be committed to listening to student feedback, reflecting on our performance and looking for new ways to improve our curriculum.

Application date

Medical degrees have a UCAS application deadline of 15 October, three months ahead of most other courses.

Entry requirements

Related courses

Intercalated Degrees

If you’re interested in medical research and/or enhancing your career prospects, you can take an Intercalated Degree - an Intercalated BSc (iBSc) as a one year course after the second or third year of your Medical Degree. Alternatively you can take an Intercalated MSc (iMSc) in Medical Research after your third year. Either of these will extend your overall degree to six years.

You also have the opportunity to intercalate outside Leicester, which significantly broadens the choices available to you.

Healthcare Assistant Training

We offer all first year students the chance to train and qualify as Health Care Assistants (HCAs). This is a superb and rewarding way of immersing yourself into the clinical/hospital environment from early in your course. The experiences and knowledge you gain from working/training as a HCA will be vital to supporting your learning as you move in to your clinical phase of training (Phase 2), and it can provide you with the required training to gain paid employment as a HCA within the NHS. Our students really value this opportunity in terms of improving ward confidence and working as part of the interprofessional team.

Student Selected Components

Student Selected Components (SSCs) offer you the opportunity to take your learning to an area of personal interest. SSCs complement the core curriculum of the MBChB degree programme by allowing you to choose an area you personally want to study. There is a wide range of SSCs  - some are University-based and topics include medical ethics and law, and a number of languages. Some are clinically-based and offer a new clinical experience or the opportunity to build on a previous clinical experience that you have an interest in. Other SSCs have a project theme, such as a quality improvement project in a clinical setting.

Medical Elective

You will have the chance to undertake an elective of your choice – where you can study healthcare in a completely new environment. Many of our students choose to travel and broaden their medical experience in another country.

Activities and Outreach

Leicester Medical School has a long history of commitment to a range of outreach programmes that you can get involved in.

• The University-led MedReach programme offers opportunities to engage with local school pupils from backgrounds underrepresented in medical schools to encourage a more diverse medical profession.
• Independent student groups such as Junior Emergency Medicine (JEM), Sexpression, Nutritank, Teddy Bear’s Hospital and Medsin bring key healthcare issues to groups in Leicester and Leicestershire.
• We have a very close relationship with local homeless charities through our Project Light Initiative.

LUSUMA – Student society

It is important to have a good social life and a balanced lifestyle. LUSUMA (Leicester University Students’ Union Medical Association) is run by students and organises a huge variety of social events, sports clubs, academic and medical interest groups, as well as providing support and resources for all medical students at Leicester.