Special Features

The University of Aberdeen boasts a state of the art anatomy facility, designed and built to fit perfectly with the systems-based medical curriculum.

In the anatomy department, our students begin an exciting 3 year journey of discovery of human morphology, gaining excellent hands on knowledge of the whole body through the use of our prosected cadaveric specimens. Students are guided throughout this voyage by our friendly and dedicated team of anatomy staff as well as visiting clinicians from a range of surgical, dental and medical specialties, allowing students to seamlessly weave in-depth knowledge of traditional anatomy with its clinical applications.

Some students also have the unique opportunity to engage individually in whole body dissection and a number of clinically orientated dissection projects!

In addition to traditional learning using cadaveric material, we are proud to house a state of the art 3D anatomy learning resource allowing the integration of 3D virtual anatomy into lectures and other teaching scenarios. A full range of online anatomy resources are accessible on-site and/or remotely to all of our students.

An enthralling, world renowned collection of historical models, specimens and artwork is located right on our doorstep, within our in-house Anatomy Museum, ready to quench the thirst of all students with an historical or artistic medical interest.

Anatomy Collection

Established in the 1870s, the Anatomy Museum has a wide-ranging collection including skeletal material, fluid-preserved specimens of human tissue, historical and modern models and works on paper. Of special interest are a set of 19th century watercolours and a series of anatomical drawings by Albert Morocco.

• Find out more about the Medical Collections

We believe that our clinical attachment sessions provide our students with a wide range of clinical opportunities helping to facilitate a seamless transition between learning, examination, communication and procedural skills in a simulated environment to the clinical areas within NHS Grampian.

To achieve this, we have a dedicated team who co-ordinate and plan attachments for all of our early year students. Our two highly experienced nurse educators spend time in the clinical environments working alongside our medical students offering support and guidance as well as bedside teaching.

Early Years

Year 1

The aim of clinical attachments in Year 1 is for our students to begin putting teaching and learning of these skills into context with hospital patients and becoming familiar with the real clinical environment.

During the second term of Year 1 students receive their first experiences of clinical attachments at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary by attending either medical or surgical wards over a period of four short visits. The first session focuses on ward orientation which is delivered by exceptionally supportive ward senior charge nurses who familiarise students with the ward which they will visit for three subsequent sessions.

Following ward visits, students attend ward debrief sessions where they discuss with their peers ward experience and observations. These sessions also provide an opportunity to present the cases of patients examined on the ward.

Year 2

In Year 2, our students continue to develop their knowledge and skills in communication and examination within the clinical environment, whilst gaining an understanding of the wider multi-professional delivery of healthcare. The concept of our curriculum will assist students to develop, early in their career an understanding of work done by these groups of professionals, their influence on the patient journey and how they operate widely across the organisation.

To achieve this Year 2 students are supported by the clinical attachments team during weekly placements in various medical ward areas over a nine week period. In addition to this, students also have an opportunity to attend Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital, Royal Cornhill Hospital, Department of Medicine for the Elderly, emergency department, theatre suite, laboratory services and a number of sessions with clinical nurse specialists, radiographers and physiotherapists.

Year 3

Year 3 sees our students continuing to practise and become more confident in communication and examination skills. During ward based placements students experience taking part in case based discussions, facilitated by clinicians, when they consider investigations and principles of management of diseases applicable to patients within medical and surgical specialities.

Year 3 students continue to have a variety of clinical attachments over twenty six sessions in medical and surgical wards. Students also continue to attend sessions at Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital and Department of Medicine for the Elderly as well as theatres, infection prevention and control, laboratories and surgical pre-assessment clinics.

Senior Years

Years 4 and 5

Years 4 and 5 are based in the clinical environments within NHS Grampian and NHS Highland.  More detailed information can be found here.

The Clinical Skills Centre is located within the Suttie Centre for Teaching and Learning in Healthcare. The Centre boasts state of the art facilities to assist in delivery of clinical teaching and becomes a hub for medical students of all years in their undergraduate training. From Year one students are encouraged to rehearse their clinical skills in a safe environment prior to putting the acquired knowledge and skills into practice on real patients in clinical areas.

The Centre is equipped with the latest technology and medical simulation modalities to assist in teaching of undergraduate students in their chosen clinical studies. To complement traditional teaching methods students can use simulators to practise and hone skills such as auscultation and examination of respiratory and cardiac systems, as well as having communication/patient history taking sessions videoed through SMOTS recording system with subsequent tutor feedback.

Additionally the Centre has a fully equipped simulation suite where students are able to manage a whole range of clinical scenarios on a variety of mid and high-fidelity patient simulators. Additionally, the simulated ward area allows students and junior doctors to experience and practise skills required for managing multiple patients as they would in clinical settings but in a safe environment.

Whilst the Clinical Skills Centre is busy providing teaching for healthcare professionals throughout the academic year, students are able and indeed encouraged to book rooms for self-directed study and revision. There is a dedicated room for students to “drop in” and practise their skills, which is set up with many of the part task trainers and equipment used during initial teaching.

Though predominantly utilised for undergraduate healthcare teaching the Centre also plays a large part in providing postgraduate education within the North East Teaching Deanery as well as hosting professional examinations for Royal Colleges of both Physicians and Surgeons.

Early patient contact is an extremely important feature of our teaching programme, particularly in the early years of the curriculum. Before our students go out into the clinical environment, we provide  a safe and controlled environment in which our students can learn and practise their newly acquired skills.

Clinical Examination

Our students use peer clinical examination and also our bank of patient partners practise their clinical examination skills in a safe, non-threatening environment where they can gain confidence, competence in examination and benefit from the experience of being the patient. 

Simulation

Patient Partners also learn various health related scenarios to provide students with opportunities to practice and develop their communication skills in the setting of our Clinical Skills Centre. Students can expect to work with simulated patients from the outset.

Our simulated patient partners work alongside tutors in a supportive environment to provide individual feedback to each student from a patient’s perspective. Tutors focus their feedback on the application of each student’s medical knowledge and skills which includes the patient perspective. Our aim is to equip our graduates with the skills to become competent patient centred doctors. 

All our medicine students undertake an 8 week elective project during their final year.

It is an opportunity for our students to be completely independent in deciding where in the world they would like to go to study any aspect of medicine of particular interest. The possibilities are bounded only by the extent of one’s imagination and initiative.

 Over the last few years students have undertaken such varied projects as

• Reviewing experiences of onboard surgeons with the coastguard in Alaska
• Teaching children about malaria in Tanzania
• Reviewing pain management on a Mercy Ship in Guinea
• Treatment of mountain biking injuries in New Zealand
• Reviewing fertility treatment in Barbados

Aberdeen is one of the few UK universities that require their students to do a project whilst on their elective, but this often gives the student an opportunity to get a publication or presentation based on their project which always looks good on the CV.

Students are given access to an elective website which gives them guidelines on how to plan their elective and useful contacts both here in Aberdeen and overseas (you can have a sneak peak here). A dedicated team of elective advisors are also available to help guide students through the process.

During their six week Medical Humanities SSC third year MBChB students are encouraged to consider Medicine, Healthcare, Illness or Disability from an alternative perspective.

There is a wide range of options and project opportunities drawing on disciplines and interdisciplinary approaches across the University including;

• Literature and Creative writing;
• History of Medicine, Art and Anatomy;
• Theology, Philosophy and Ethics;
• Sociology, Anthropology and Global Health;
• Fine Art, Music and Film;
• Education and Psychology. 

It is also possible to study a variety of modern languages.

Courses are either taken alongside honours students from Humanities courses, or are bespoke courses designed specifically for medical students. Alternatively, students may opt to complete an individual project in an area of their own choosing.

We feel this course enriches students' personal lives as well as their educational experience, allowing for a greater understanding of patients' lives.  There are also opportunities for students to learn to communicate in a variety of media to different audiences, writing essays and reports even publishing papers, giving presentations some at conferences and gaining medical school and national prizes.

Many students find this very rewarding part of the course and all students gain additional skills and attributes as a result.   

For more information please visit the Medical Humanities SSC page: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/medical/humanities/

Some comments from previous students:

"So interesting, very valuable! Learned about concepts and ideologies that are forgotten about in the medical course but are clearly very important!"

"The course was not only on a subject I had never studied before, it was delivered in a way I wasn't familiar with. I have learned a lot about the subject but also learned a whole new way of thinking - how to appreciate that there isn't always a right answer! It was extremely thought provoking and will genuinely make me a better doctor."

"I liked the opportunity to give some consideration to a topic of personal interest, as well as the opportunity to experience life on the Old Aberdeen campus."

"This has been one of my favourite parts of the course so far. It was great to get to do something a bit different."

Given the geographical location of Aberdeen as the northern-most medical school in the UK, and its proximity to the Highlands and Islands, we have strong links with the practice of Remote and Rural medicine.

Thus an option is offered in years 4 and 5 to students who would like to experience healthcare in such settings and who might have a future interest in rural practice. Students who are selected for this option spend their entire 4th year at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, with visits to remote clinics and attachments to rural GP practices wherever possible.

In final year students spend two of their three clinical attachments in a rural setting e.g. Stornoway, Orkney, Shetland. Students who undertake this option are well placed for future career training in rural medicine, a current health priority.

Student Selective Components (SSCs) aim to address some of the key, non-academic elements in medical education, such as establishing a foundation for lifelong learning, developing mentoring and teaching skills including contributing to the support, appraisal and review of colleagues, learning to manage time and resources effectively and, perhaps most importantly, to develop an approach to learning based on curiosity and the exploration of knowledge rather than its passive acquisition.

SSC modules are assessed through a mixture of staff and peer assessment. Assessment is generally based on:

• Group written report
• Group oral presentation
• Individual summary of report
• Team working (peer assessment)

Year 1 SSC

This block of course work centres around building student confidence in self-directed learning, team working, literature reviewing and scientific writing.

Students are tasked with contributing to a group report and oral presentation on a subject largely of their own choosing.

In first year seven different broad research themes are offered:

• Developmental
• Metabolism
• Neuroscience
• Reproduction
• Inflammation and Immunity
• Exercise and Health
• Tropical Diseases

Prior to the start of the SSC module students choose which theme they wish to study. When the module begins, the students meet with the theme lead for that topic where they receive a short introduction and form into groups of around 8 within which they work together, over a three week period, to prepare a written report on their chosen sub-speciality within that theme. At the end of the three week period the group also present their findings orally to the other groups in the theme.

Year 2 SSC - 'The Mysteries of How Molecules Cause Disease’

The biochemical and cellular nature of many diseases, long a mystery, are beginning to be understood.

The year 2 SSC explores such molecular mechanisms of disease and students pick from 20 topics. Students, in small groups, explore 1 topic in depth for 1 month.

Topics have included:

• Understanding the cause of particular cancers
• Why ‘superbugs’ become antibiotic resistant
• Why Parkinson’s disease occurs in some patients but not others and
• Why some cancers evade drug treatments.

Students do most of the work themselves, and present their findings as a group report and presentation to the rest of the class. Challenges include trying to understand how molecules work and coping with your fellow students!

Year 3 SSC - Medical Humanities

The Medical Humanities SSC aims to provide students with an alternative perspective on medicine - or healthcare, sickness and disability - which is not provided by the mainstream medical curriculum.

This is achieved by studies in an extensive range of Humanities subjects including anthropology, economics, history, sociology, educational studies, divinity and art.

Languages, including French, German, Gaelic and Spanish are also offered and prepare students for working in regions where those languages are spoken. Students taking Medical Humanities are encouraged to work on their own initiative and some courses do not have the regular weekly lectures students may be used to.

Further, Alternative Project options are available, where students come to us with ideas of their own. These are considered for feasibility in conjunction with the student. Medical Humanities encourages students to consider the nature of knowledge-making; to reflect on the processes of teaching and learning; to understand the experiences of medicine, health, sickness and disability from different perspectives including that of the patient.

Year 4 SSC - Clinical Effectiveness

At the beginning of Year 4, again students have the chance to work with a small group of colleagues and a tutor to study, in depth, a medical topic of their choice. Students focus on assessing whether a treatment, surgical procedure or public health intervention is effective in its aim to improve health. Students have the chance to share this work with peers at a presentation session at the end of the 4 weeks.

Each year, a few groups go on to work with their tutors to produce work that has been presented at national conferences, sent as briefing papers to local clinical leads and even submitted for publication in journals!