Undergraduate ECTS Modules
European core modules taught inside the medical degree, built on United Kingdom and European health policy and current guideline-directed practice. Two four-credit units, delivered in a blended intensive format and substituted within an existing taught module by learning agreement — so nothing is added to the length of the degree.
Reviewed and kept current
Last editorial review: 2 August 2026 · Next scheduled refresh: 1 February 2027.
What these modules are
These are credit-bearing units of undergraduate medical education, designed to sit inside an MD programme rather than alongside it. Each carries four ECTS credits and a hundred and twenty hours of student workload, and each is taught to the standard expected of a core clinical module.
They exist because two things have become true at once. Clinical guidance in cardiovascular, renal, metabolic and women’s health now changes faster than most undergraduate curricula can absorb; and the health systems graduates enter are increasingly governed by policy instruments — on health data, on medical artificial intelligence, on health technology assessment — that are not taught in the medical degree at all.
Why United Kingdom and European policy forms the backbone
Both modules rest on the same foundation: health policy taught as a subject in its own right, then applied to a clinical field. That choice rests on three arguments.
Policy determines whether evidence reaches patients
The gap between what guidelines recommend and what health systems deliver is now the largest single source of preventable harm in both fields. That gap is not a clinical problem; it is a problem of pathways, incentives, data and accountability. Students who can read a national framework, find the indicator and identify where delivery fails are equipped to close it.
These frameworks are unusually well specified
Both jurisdictions publish measurable objectives, baseline performance and dated ambitions. That makes them teachable: a student can be given a real indicator, a real baseline and a real target, and asked to reason about the distance between them. Few health systems document themselves so precisely.
They set an international reference standard
European regulation on health data, medical artificial intelligence and health technology assessment, and United Kingdom guideline-directed therapy, are widely used as reference points by medical schools well beyond either jurisdiction. A graduate who understands them holds a transferable analytical skill, not a local one.
The blended intensive format
A period of structured, guided online preparation, followed by a short and deliberately concentrated period of physical co-location, with credit awarded for the whole.
Preparation front-loads the knowledge, so the week on campus is spent entirely on application, reasoning and defence.
Why this format, pedagogically
The preparation phase front-loads knowledge acquisition asynchronously, so that co-located time is spent exclusively on what cannot be done online — reasoning aloud, working in groups on a national policy problem, defending a position under questioning, and practising consultations. The intensive week is not lectures moved into a room; it is the application layer.
Why this format, operationally
Concentration produces a cohort effect that weekly teaching rarely achieves: students arrive prepared, work intensively with the same group for five days, and leave having produced something they can defend. For the programme, the format fits inside an existing semester without displacing a whole module.
| Workload component | Timing | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Live virtual teaching | Weeks 1–4, evenings and weekends | 20 |
| Directed e-learning | Throughout | 25 |
| On-campus intensive week | Week 5, five days | 30 |
| Benchmarking project | Weeks 2–6, supervised | 30 |
| Assessment preparation and reading | Throughout | 15 |
| Total | Contact 50 : self-directed 70 | 120 |
Mastery learning, not exposure
The question is not whether a student has attended the teaching, but whether they can demonstrate the outcome.
Outcomes mapped
Set at unit level and mapped to individual assessment items.
Formative first
Two progress tests give feedback in time to act on it.
Threshold gate
Demonstrated engagement is required before the final paper.
Defence
Reasoning probed in real time — judgement, not recall.
Item review
Where a cohort stumbles, the content is flagged for revision.
Curriculum balance
Of the 120 hours of workload, fifty are taught. Those fifty are divided between two strands, and the division is set by rule rather than by convenience.
Design rule: Strand A ≥ 55% of taught hours. Delivered: 56%.
| Delivery component | Detail | Total h | Policy | Clinical |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evening seminars | 4 × 2 h | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| Weekend workshops | 4 × 3 h | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| On-campus day 1 | Governance to bedside | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| On-campus day 2 | Clinical intensive | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| On-campus day 3 | Data and governance clinic | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| On-campus day 4 | Prevention and pathways | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| On-campus day 5 | Project defence and final paper | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| Total taught | 56 : 44 | 50 | 28 | 22 |
Assessment
Standardised across both modules as continuous 60 : summative 40 of marks. Two instruments, four sittings, both split across the continuous and summative axes — so the ratio holds by instrument and by timing at the same time.
| Instrument | What it tests | Weight | Continuous | Summative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Written paper | Single-best-answer, mapped to policy instruments and current guidance | 40% | 25% | 15% |
| Benchmarking project | Protocol, interim portfolio, written report and oral defence | 60% | 35% | 25% |
| Total | 100% | 60% | 40% |
Progression
The benchmarking project
Each student selects an indicator from their own country or region, benchmarks it against a defined European policy objective, and proposes an implementable improvement within a health-data-governance frame. The instrument, the rubric and the marking standard are fixed; the dataset and the comparator are chosen locally.
A note on naming
The cardiovascular module addresses a constellation of inter-related conditions which, in combination, produce cardiovascular disease. Internationally, that constellation has been named in several ways, and the naming is not settled.
| Term | Named by | Status |
|---|---|---|
| CKM | American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Diabetes Association, American Society of Nephrology | Clinical guideline, June 2026; stages 0–4 |
| CVKM | United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Care with NHS England | National service framework, July 2026 |
| CVRM | NHS England indicator coding | In live national audit use |
| CKLM | European Federation of Internal Medicine | Primary-care consensus, 2026 |
| SMD | European Atherosclerosis Society | Consensus staging statement |
| DCRM | Multi-society, diabetes-led | In continued clinical use |
The modules
Separate units, with separate cohorts, separate credit and separate assessment. A programme may adopt either, or both across an academic year.
European Health Policy and the Prevention of Cardiometabolic Multiple Long-Term Conditions
Hypercholesterolaemia, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and chronic kidney disease, with heart failure, atrial fibrillation, steatotic liver disease and obesity — taught against the policy architecture intended to prevent them.
Open the moduleEuropean Women’s Health across the Life-Course — WHEEL
Menopause and bone health, migraine, diagnostic delay, cancer pathways and perimenopausal neurodevelopmental presentation — taught against European gender-health law and a recently rewritten national strategy.
Open the moduleDelivery schedule
Both modules run twice each academic year, in autumn and spring, so a single cohort can take both across one year.
| Delivery | Module | Preparation phase and on-campus week |
|---|---|---|
| Autumn 2026 | Women’s health across the life-course | 20 Oct – 14 Nov 2026 · on campus Mon 16 – Fri 20 November 2026 |
| Autumn 2026 | Cardiometabolic multiple long-term conditions | 27 Oct – 21 Nov 2026 · on campus Mon 23 – Fri 27 November 2026 |
| Spring 2027 | Cardiometabolic multiple long-term conditions | Feb – Mar 2027 · on campus Mon 15 – Fri 19 March 2027 |
| Spring 2027 | Women’s health across the life-course | Feb – Mar 2027 · on campus Mon 22 – Fri 26 March 2027 |
Kept current
Guidance in both fields changes faster than a conventional curriculum revision cycle can accommodate.
Every change to guidance or policy is appraised for whether it alters what should be taught.
The affected learning outcome, teaching material and assessment item are identified, so revision is surgical rather than wholesale.
A named clinical editor approves every change before publication. Nothing reaches students unreviewed.
Institutional learning packages are automatically refreshed, so the local copy reflects evolving guidance without rebuilding.
Reviewed and kept current
Content version 1.0 · reviewed August 2026 · next scheduled review February 2027.
Where next
Open either module for its units, hour map, assessment and dates, or read the institutional guidance if you are considering adoption for your programme.
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