How to study medicine in the UK, from lectures to the MLA

Short answer first: to graduate from a UK medical school you have to pass the GMC's Medical Licensing Assessment, which is an on-screen applied knowledge test plus a clinical and professional skills assessment, both run by your own school. Schools fold it into exams you already sit, and they test you throughout with progress tests and OSCEs, as Cardiff and Liverpool do. So the method that fits is weekly retrieval of everything covered so far, timed question banks from the clinical years, and placement notes that identify nobody.

This article covers how medicine is examined in the UK and how to study for it, from the pre-clinical lecture block to finals. It does not replace your school's assessment handbook, which names your exams, their weightings and their dates. Where a rule comes from the GMC or a named medical school, the sentence links to the source.

What is the MLA, and when do you sit it?

Medical degrees run on the same university rules for exams and resits as any other degree, covered in how UK university exams work, with one extra layer. The General Medical Council, which keeps the medical register, sets a licensing threshold that every UK graduate has to clear before working as a doctor.

• Everyone graduating from a UK school sits it. The GMC's Medical Licensing Assessment page says all medical students graduating from UK universities need to pass the MLA as part of their degree before joining the register. International doctors continue to take PLAB, which is compliant with the same requirements.
• Two parts, both at your own school. The GMC's guide to taking the MLA describes an applied knowledge test, an on-screen exam with multiple choice questions that tests applying knowledge to scenarios, and a clinical and professional skills assessment that your school sets and runs. Schools call the second one different things, such as an OSCE or an OSLER.
• The clinical part comes late. UK medical schools set and deliver the CPSA for students in their penultimate or final year, and the GMC quality assures each school's version against published requirements.
• The knowledge test is built jointly. The medical school AKT is constructed centrally by medical schools collaborating through the Medical Schools Council and delivered locally, with a common format, test standard and delivery method.
• It has been in place since 2024/25. The GMC and the Medical Schools Council announced in July 2020 that the assessment would be fully implemented for students graduating from the 2024/25 academic year.
• Failing it means not graduating. UK students pay the GMC nothing extra, results come from the school, and the MLA is a degree requirement like any other.

The GMC's own line on preparation is that your course is the preparation, and that you will not need to learn anything beyond your school's curriculum. That is true and slightly misleading at the same time. Nothing new has to be learned, but five years of material has to still be available on the day, which is a problem of retention rather than coverage.

How do medical schools examine you before finals?

Every school publishes its own mix, and the assessment handbook is the document to read in week one rather than week ten. Three published examples show the range of what you are preparing for, and how differently the same degree can be assessed.

• Cardiff: progress tests through the course. Cardiff's MBBCh page lists anatomy exams, regular progress tests made of single best answer papers, short answer papers, coursework, placement feedback, OSCEs and ISCEs, and end of unit quizzes. The MLA sits inside the Year 4 ISCE and one of the Year 5 progress tests.
• Manchester: OSCEs from first year. Manchester's MBChB course details list written examinations and Clinical Competency Assessments, also known as OSCEs, alongside workplace-based assessments and portfolio work, and it says the MLA is fully integrated into the assessments you normally take during the course.
• Liverpool: sequential OSCEs in the clinical years. Liverpool's OSCE guide covers Years 3 to 5 with consultation, examination and procedural skill stations. Candidates without a clear pass in the first sequence sit a second set of different stations, and the pass mark is the sum of the individual station cut scores plus one standard error of measurement.

Those formats pull in opposite directions from the block exam most students arrive expecting. Cardiff describes its progress tests as a way for you and the school to see how you are progressing, which only works if earlier material stays in play. An OSCE, meanwhile, tests what your hands and your words do in a few timed minutes, and no amount of reading substitutes for rehearsing it out loud.

What a progress test asks of you

• Keep every block alive. Run a question bank that includes blocks which finished months ago, not only the current one.
• Sort your errors. After each test, split wrong answers into things you never learned and things you forgot, and feed the forgotten ones back into review.
• Watch the trend. One score says little on its own. The line across the year is the signal the format was designed to give you.

Why do medical students use spaced repetition?

Medicine asks you to hold a large body of facts and to hold it for years, which is the problem spaced repetition exists to solve. You review each item shortly before you would have forgotten it, and the gaps between reviews widen as the memory strengthens. Anki, a flashcard app built on that schedule, is increasingly used by medical students, and it has been studied.

A 2023 cohort study in Medical Science Educator followed 130 first-year students at Boonshoft School of Medicine in the United States who took part in an Anki training programme. The 78 who used it for at least one exam scored significantly higher than the 52 who did not: 6.4 percent on the first course exam, 6.2 on the second, 7.0 on the third and 12.9 percent on the Comprehensive Basic Science Exam.

Read that carefully before you rebuild your whole method around it. Students chose whether to use Anki, so the users and non-users may differ in ways the study cannot remove, and the authors conclude only that use may be associated with higher scores. They also found little correlation between the app's own usage statistics and exam performance. What the result supports is the habit of regular retrieval, not a daily card target.

Building cards that survive to finals

• One fact per card. A card asking for five features of a condition is marked wrong for missing one, and tells you nothing about which one.
• Ask the way the exam asks. The AKT tests applying knowledge to scenarios, so write cards that start from a presentation and ask for the diagnosis, the investigation or the next step.
• Write them the same week. Cards made from a lecture you attended two days ago are far more accurate than cards made from slides in April. The mechanics are in making flashcards from your notes.
• Fix the bad card immediately. A card that is wrong or ambiguous costs you twice, once when you learn it and once in the exam.

Which question banks do students use, and what do they cost?

From the clinical years, most revision runs through questions, because the AKT is a multiple choice paper and schools such as Cardiff assess with single best answer progress tests. Two banks aimed at UK finals publish prices in pounds on their own pages. The figures below were checked in September 2026 and both vendors change them, so read the page before paying.

A bank earns its price when you use it to find gaps rather than to count questions answered. Work in timed blocks, read the explanation for every question you got right by luck as well as the ones you failed, and turn each gap into a card the same day. That keeps one revision system instead of two running side by side.

How do you study a pre-clinical week?

The first two years look like a science degree with more hours in them. Manchester describes learning through lectures, practical classes including anatomy dissection, team-based learning and themed case discussions, with clinical experience alongside. Most of the fact load arrives in those sessions, and what decides how much of it you keep is what happens in the two days afterwards.

If your lectures are not captured and you want your own recording, ask first. UK universities differ sharply on whether students may record at all, and recording lectures in the UK sets out what named universities require. Treat the file as a source for the notes you could not finish, not as a lecture to sit through twice, because the second listen costs an hour and adds very little.

The 24-hour lecture routine

1. Within a day, read your notes or the transcript once and mark anything you could not explain to a classmate.
2. Turn the marked parts into one-fact cards and two or three scenario questions.
3. Add them to the deck so they return tomorrow, then in a few days, then in a week or more.
4. At the weekend, answer twenty bank questions across the whole block so far, not only this week.

What does a clinical year look like week to week?

From Year 3 Manchester describes immersion in clinical placements across its clinical education campuses, supported by online cases and themed case discussions. The study problem changes shape. Less new material arrives in lectures, and more of it arrives once, at a bedside, in a form you will not see again unless you write it down and turn it into a question.

The two habits that have to survive a bad week are the short note after each session and the daily card review. Everything else can move. As the CPSA and finals approach, the question blocks grow, new cards shrink, and station practice moves from once to three times a week, because the clinical exam rewards rehearsal more than reading.

What should you write down on placement?

Placements produce the most useful learning of the degree and the most dangerous notes. The general routine for a placement notebook, including how to keep one that identifies nobody, is in notes in seminars, labs and placements. For medical students the standard comes from the GMC, and it is specific about your logbook.

• Nothing identifiable, anywhere. The GMC's guidance for medical students says you must not share identifiable information about a patient where you can be overheard, such as in a public place or on social media, or include it in any work or logbooks you submit.
• Ask before you disclose for a logbook or inquiry. The same guidance tells you to ask your medical school or supervisor for advice if you are unsure what to share.
• Dated, clear and written soon after. The GMC's advice on recording your work asks for notes that are dated, clear, accurate and legible and made as soon as possible after your interaction with a patient, even when they never reach the official record.
• Stored and destroyed as confidential. Do not keep confidential material anywhere insecure, on paper or on a device, and dispose of patient-related notes using facilities designed for confidential waste.

The placement note that is safe to keep

Write the medicine. The pattern of the presentation, the examination finding you had never felt before, the investigation the registrar ordered and the reason given, the drug and its dosing rule, and the question you could not answer when asked. Leave out names, dates of birth, hospital numbers, bed numbers and any detail unusual enough to identify somebody. In the evening, turn the best two or three lines into cards and look up the question you failed.

Can you record anything on placement?

Not patients. The GMC's guidance on making and using recordings of patients is addressed to registered doctors, and even for them it sets conditions: appropriate consent or other valid authority, no pressure on the patient to agree, stopping the recording if the patient asks or if it is affecting the consultation, anonymising or coding before any secondary use, and secure storage.

A student with a phone in a pocket satisfies none of that. Where recordings are used in your teaching, such as a filmed consultation with a simulated patient, they come through the school or the clinical team, who handle the consent and the storage those conditions require. A lecture is a different case, provided no patient is identifiable in it, and there the only permission you need is the lecturer's.

Where Notibo fits

Notibo belongs to the lecture half of a medical degree, not the ward. It records a lecture, or takes an audio file you upload, and returns a transcript, structured notes and flashcards with spaced repetition, so the cards from Monday's anatomy lecture exist on Monday night instead of in April. It also turns PDF, PPTX and DOCX files into notes and flashcards, which covers slide decks and handouts, and it transcribes 89 languages, with the transcript in the language spoken. Check the cards against your own sources before you trust them, because a card is only as accurate as the lecture it came from.

You can try Pro free for 14 days, with 240 minutes of recording and no card. After that the free plan covers 30 minutes of recording a month. Pro is 9.99 euro a month or 88.99 euro a year, billed in euro with the local amount shown at checkout. Uploads are capped at 50 MB, and long recordings are saved in smaller parts as they run and joined back into one transcript. Files are stored in the EU on Supabase in Frankfurt, while transcription and the AI notes run on US processors under standard contractual clauses. Ask your lecturer before you record a teaching session, and do not point it at a patient.