Doctor of Medicine

The PLACES curriculum is structured around six core themes that reflect the key roles a future doctor must fulfil: Professional, Leader, Advocate, Clinician, Educator, and Scholar. All outcomes, content and teaching in the UWA MD are based on these six themes, ensuring graduates develop not only clinical knowledge and skills but also communication, leadership, teamwork, ethical reasoning and scholarly abilities.

In Year 1, students gain background knowledge in biomedical sciences. In Years 2 and 3, students undertake clinical attachments in Perth hospital wards, clinics, general practices and community settings — with 25% of the cohort completing Year 3 in a rural Western Australian setting. In Year 4, students may complete an overseas elective, further clinical attachments, a Selective option, their Scholarly Activity stream, e-Portfolio and Procedural Skills Logbook, followed by a Preparation for Internship block including an Extension option and an intern-shadowing block.

The PDM program is a longitudinal mentoring program in which all MD students are paired with an experienced clinician mentor for the duration of their degree. Students discuss career paths, professional and ethical issues, and discipline-specific matters with their mentor. The program includes mentoring sessions, seminars, ePortfolio tasks and a case-based ethics essay, and assesses graduate outcomes related to professional attitudes and behaviour, self-care, medical ethics, and medical law governance.

In Year 3, all UWA MD students choose a Scholarly Activity Program that continues into Year 4. The available streams are: a research stream, a community-based service learning stream, or coursework streams in public health or health professions education.

Graduate applicants are initially ranked based on GPA (60%) and GAMSAT/MCAT (40%), with the highest-ranking applicants shortlisted for interview. After the interview, final ranking for non-rural domestic and international applicants is based on GPA (30%), GAMSAT/MCAT (20%) and interview score (50%). For rural applicants, the final ranking is GPA (22.5%), GAMSAT (15%), interview score (37.5%) and rurality rating (25%). A minimum sGPA of 5.5 and a GAMSAT score of at least 55 (with no section under 50) are required to be considered.