Overview
This two-year full-time postgraduate course runs for a minimum of 90 weeks and includes substantial clinical placement experience.
You will study the anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, microbiology, and pharmacology of the human body in health and disease. The course combines academic learning with practical clinical experience to prepare you for patient-centred care across a range of healthcare settings.
Throughout the course, you will develop the knowledge and practical skills needed to assess, diagnose, and manage patients safely and effectively. This includes learning how to:
- Take a clinical history from a patient
- Request appropriate investigations
- Apply clinical reasoning to support diagnosis
- Develop safe management plans and referrals
You will also explore public health, mental health, patient safety, multidisciplinary teamworking, and diagnostic decision-making. In addition, you will study research methodologies and learn how to plan and complete a service improvement audit project.
Clinical placements
This course includes mandatory placements within the NHS and other clinical settings, where you will work with high-risk and vulnerable patients in professional healthcare environments.
This course is in Clearing
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Course modules
This MSc Physician Associate programme combines clinical, scientific, and professional training for modern healthcare practice. You will develop skills in bioscience, diagnostics, clinical procedures, emergency care, communication, and clinical reasoning through academic study, simulation, and practical assessment. On successful completion of the course, you will graduate prepared to work safely and effectively as a Physician Associate across a range of healthcare settings. You will also be eligible to sit the Royal College of Physicians Physician Associate Registration Assessment (PARA). More information is available on the Royal College of Physicians website.
Year 2 of the MSc Physician Associate Studies programme develops your expertise in research, clinical practice, and service improvement. The Research Methods module will teach you how to design studies and critically evaluate medical literature, preparing you for your dissertation. You'll gain extensive hands-on experience through Clinical Placements in primary and secondary care settings, including general practice, surgery, and emergency medicine, which will prepare you for the national certification exam. Your Service Improvement Project will allow you to lead impactful healthcare research, while Advanced Clinical Practice hones your high-level diagnostic, procedural, and emergency care skills. You'll graduate as a confident, competent clinician, ready to make a measurable impact in healthcare.
NOTE: Modules are subject to change
Download course specification
Entry requirements
What makes this course different

Funding available
NHS England, has provided a national funding strategy for all Physician Associates, where students receive a grant towards tuition fees, split equally across the two years of the course. The amount usually increases annually and for 2024/25 was £5,306 split over two years (£2,653 per annum). You will not need to apply for this separately.

State-of-the-art facilities
Learn in our newly refurbished simulation centre featuring the latest in AR and VR technology.
See our facilities
Innovative clinical career
With a strong clinical emphasis from day one, the course is designed to produce safe and competent physician associates, who put the patient at the centre of what they do, with an innovative module on learning clinical reasoning and extensive opportunity to learn good practice in clinical communication, that is closely linked to patient safety.
What we're researching
We have two research groups, one working to develop new medicines and treatments, the other in infections and immunity. We're also involved in research that tries to model and predict new drugs using bio-informatics. This uses computers to process and study biological data to help predict what a new drug structure would look like before making it.
We often carry out research in collaboration with other leading research universities in London, including University College London and King's College London as well as overseas institutions. Our phytopharmaceutical scientists have close links with researchers at Kew. Students studying at all levels have an opportunity to get involved in our research work.
Bioscience research played a major part in our successful performance in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework - the six-yearly national review of research quality in higher education. 92 per cent of UEL's overall research was rated as world-leading, internationally excellent, or internationally recognised. Other prominent researchers include: Dr Mukhlesur Rahman (antimicrobial natural products); Dr Samir Ayoub (inflammation, pain and thermoregulation); Dr Winston Morgan (toxicology of natural products and synthetic drugs); Dr Barbara Pendry (cancer and mental health); Dr Michael Seed (preclinical models of inflammation and immunity); Dr Sue Outram (the immune response); Dr Sally Cutler (zoonosis); Dr John George (targeted drug design); Dr David Guiliano (microbiology) and Dr Geoffrey Webb (diet and nutrition).
Your future career
The Physician Associate (PA) role was introduced to the UK in 2003. Physician Associates are a new type of healthcare professional under General Medical Council (GMC) regulation who receive a broad, generalist medical education. To work as a Physician Associate you will need to pass your university course and then you will need to pass a Physician Associate Registration Assessment (PARA) professional national exam. This consists of a theory and a practical section. Once passing the PARA exam, you will need to join the General Medical Council (GMC) to register and work.
You will work alongside doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants and more to provide clinical care as part of an integrated multidisciplinary team either in a hospital or in the community. Physician Associates are dependent practitioners, who as they gain experience and skills can learn to work autonomously but will always work under the supervision of a fully trained and experienced doctor. They bring a range of new professional talent to add to the existing skill mix within clinical teams. Physician Associates provide a stable, generalist section of the clinical workforce and will increasingly help to ease the current clinical workforce pressures in the NHS.
Physician Associates (PAs) have been regulated by the General Medical Council (GMC) since December 2024. The new regulation will help assure patients, colleagues and employers that Physician Associates have the knowledge and skills to work safely and that they can be held to account if serious concerns are raised. For further details, please refer to the GMC website.
You will work alongside doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants and more to provide clinical care as part of an integrated multidisciplinary team either in a hospital or in the community. Physician Associates are dependent practitioners, who as they gain experience and skills can learn to work autonomously, but will always work under the supervision of a fully trained and experienced doctor. They bring a range of new professional talent to add to the existing skill mix within clinical teams. Physician Associates provide a stable, generalist section of the clinical workforce and will increasingly help to ease the current clinical workforce pressures in the NHS.
Physician Associates (PAs) have been regulated by the General Medical Council (GMC) since December 2024. The new regulation will help assure patients, colleagues and employers that Physician Associates have the knowledge and skills to work safely and that they can be held to account if serious concerns are raised. For further details, please refer to the GMC website.
Research
This is a taught master's programme, but as part of your studies, you will need to complete a 5,000-word research service improvement project. This piece of work explores an aspect of one of the following: Quality audit; Community Practice; Healthcare policy; Public health or Psychosocial issues applied to healthcare. You will work under the guidance of a project supervisor to identify a suitable topic for exploration and develop your research methodology.
You will be given the chance to learn evidence-based medicine, along with critical evaluation and analysis of a range of relevant literature. You will also need to assess the potential impact of your findings on healthcare improvement within a clinical setting. Your project will provide an opportunity for you to collaborate with clinical colleagues to extend your knowledge with reference to service improvement.
How you'll learn
You'll be taught by a range of staff, who are either medical educators, scientists or work in clinical practice. This will ensure that you develop into safe, competent, reflective, multi-professional and patient-centred clinicians who can work safely under direct or indirect supervision. Each module is designed so that you can acquire the appropriate level of clinical knowledge and skills to support your clinical work.
Guided independent study
You will be taught by a combination of lectures, tutorials, practical sessions and simulation workshops. When not attending timetabled lectures, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This will typically involve directed reading, practising clinical scenarios, reading journal articles and books, working on individual and group projects, undertaking coursework assignments and presentations, and preparing for exams. Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities, including online resources, the library and the UEL VLE Moodle.
Academic support
Our academic support team provides help in a range of areas - including learning and disability support.
Dedicated personal tutor
When you arrive, we'll introduce you to your academic advisor . This is the member of staff who will provide academic guidance, personal and pastoral support throughout your time at UEL and who will show you how to make the best use of all the help and resources that we offer.
Workload
Each year you will spend around 300 hours of timetabled learning and teaching activities. These may be lectures, workshops, seminars and individual and group tutorials. Contact hours may vary depending on each module.
The approximate percentages for this course are:
- Year 1: scheduled teaching - 4032 hours; guided independent study - 664 hours; clinical placement hours – 188 hours, simulation – 100 hours.
- Year 2: scheduled teaching - 1746 hours; guided independent study - 554 hours; clinical placement hours - 1212 hours, simulation – 100 hours
This is a 2-year full-time course, that is delivered over 3 terms across the year, with no summer break. The final results and awards are released in August. Graduates are then able to take their Physician Associate Registration Assessment in September ( dates are subject to RCP/GMC timetable).
Your timetable
Your individualised timetable is normally available to students within 48 hours of enrolment. Whilst we make every effort to ensure timetables are as student friendly as possible, scheduled teaching can take place on any day of the week between 9am and 6pm.
This is a full-time course with an expectation to fully engage with scheduled teaching on campus and directed learning activities throughout the week for the full duration of the course. All students should be able to commit to 100 per cent engagement with clinical placements at destinations arranged by the university and should be flexible to commute to various placement locations to complete their mandatory clinical rotations. Please note that travel commute to placements is not reimbursed.
Class sizes
The approximate size of classes on this course is 30. In the classroom for tutorials or in simulation you will be taught in smaller groups of 5 - 30 students. However, this can vary by module and type of learning activity.
How you'll be assessed
Year 1:
- 30% OSCE – Objective Structured Clinical Examination (Practical)
- 30% – KBA Knowledge Based Assessment (Multiple-choice theory test)
- 20% placement portfolio
- 10% written exam
- 10% verbal presentation
Year 2:
- 25% OSCE - Objective Structured Clinical Examination (Practical)
- 25% KBA – Knowledge Based Assessment (Multiple-choice theory test)
- 25% placement portfolio
- 25% service improvement project
You will be assessed in various ways as appropriate for each module.
This includes theory-based assessments, assignments based on clinical case studies, practical assessments, oral and poster presentations, completion of a placement portfolio, OSCEs (objective structured clinical examinations), and a 5000-word Master's level service improvement project.
You will receive feedback throughout the course to support your learning and development and have opportunities to engage in various formative tasks to support your learning.
Campus and facilities
Stratford Campus, London, E15 4LZ
Our historic Stratford campus is located in one of the best-connected areas of London: close to Stratford's thriving town centre, the 2012 Olympic Park, just 15 minutes from London's West End and 20 minutes from Canary Wharf.
Stratford’s facilities include a state-of-the-art library and learning centre, the majestic great hall and specialist laboratories and computing services. The School of Childhood and Social Care, and Centre for Clinical Education in Podiatry, Physiotherapy and Sports Science are housed in new buildings. There is also a campus restaurant and bookshop, and a Students' Union café-bar.
Westfield Stratford City - Europe's largest indoor shopping mall - is just one of Stratford's attractions, alongside many other shops, cafés, bars, restaurants and cinemas. Stratford is fast becoming London's new cultural quarter, with Sadler's Wells East and V&A East moving in.
Who teaches this course
This course is delivered by School of Medicine, previously from the School of Health, Sport and Bioscience
The teaching team includes qualified academics, physician associates, healthcare practitioners and industry experts as guest speakers. Full details of the academics will be provided in the student handbook and module guides.






