Under the steerage of Professor David Maddison (Founding Dean),[5][6] it very quickly gained an international reputation for excellence and innovation in teaching and learning.
Program delivery has been developed and updated over the past 30 years, but the basics still remain and the school continues to provide early clinical experience to support its problem based learning curricula.
The Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine – MD-JMP[7] is characterised by an integrated problem-based curriculum with early clinical exposure and substantial community involvement.
Emphasis is placed on understanding clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, learned in the context of the relevant basic science concepts and mechanisms.
The integrated program requires students to make connections between the different areas in medicine and the basic sciences in order to apply them to specific medical problems.
The curriculum centres on problem-based, self-directed learning where students work in small tutorial groups to analyse clinical problems, and to gain an understanding of relevant scientific data.
In these courses/units students study a problem based learning curriculum which is interwoven with clinical placements in rural and urban general practice as well as in selected subspecialties.