Medicine degrees aren’t easy to get into. But this doesn’t mean becoming a doctor is out of the question. If it looks like you won’t meet the entry requirements to study medicine at Leicester, this Foundation Year degree is your path to making it happen.

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.

The Foundation Year is taught alongside Biological Science students but includes elements specific to Medicine. 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. We have more than 40 years' 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 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.