Medicine

Medicine is one of the most demanding and most rewarding degrees a student can pursue. It trains you to understand the human body in health and disease, to reason carefully through clinical uncertainty, and to work with patients at moments of genuine vulnerability. A medical degree is not simply a collection of scientific knowledge; it is a sustained formation in professional judgement, ethical reasoning, communication, and the ability to act decisively under pressure.

At Queen Mary University of London you will study across five years on a full-time programme, benefiting from close links to some of London's most distinguished NHS teaching hospitals. This means that clinical exposure begins early and deepens progressively, placing you alongside a genuinely diverse patient population presenting with a wide range of clinical problems. You will move between the sciences that underpin medicine, including anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, and pathology, and the clinical disciplines that define practice, from general medicine and surgery to psychiatry, paediatrics, and primary care.

Queen Mary's location in east London, one of the most ethnically and socially diverse parts of the country, shapes your understanding of health inequalities and the social determinants of illness in ways that few other settings can match. Problem-based and enquiry-led learning encourages you to think like a clinician from early in the course, developing the habit of drawing on evidence and reasoning rather than rote knowledge.

Graduates of medicine in the UK enter a structured two-year foundation programme before progressing to specialty or general practice training. The range of eventual specialties is vast, encompassing surgery, anaesthetics, oncology, cardiology, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and many others, as well as academic medicine for those drawn to research and teaching. The degree also opens doors to careers in global health, medical education, health policy, and the pharmaceutical and medtech industries for graduates who wish to apply their training beyond direct clinical practice.