Clinical Pharmacology

Please scroll down for 2024 entry criteria.

Entry Criteria: 2023 Entry

To be eligible for the Clinical Pharmacology BSc programme, you must meet the requirements outlined under Entry Qualifications, Other Academic Requirements, and Non-academic Requirements below.

Entry Qualifications

With the exception of GCSEs, all qualifications must have been completed within the previous five years, including the year of application.

Other Academic Requirements

Non-academic Requirements

Entry Criteria: 2024 Entry

To be eligible for the Clinical Pharmacology BSc programme, you must meet the requirements outlined under Entry Qualifications, Other Academic Requirements, and Non-academic Requirements below.

Entry Qualifications

With the exception of GCSEs, all qualifications must have been completed within the previous five years, including the year of application.

Other Academic Requirements

Non-academic Requirements

The curriculum is based around seven core modules. These modules run alongside each other throughout the course, allowing you to understand topics from different perspectives and reinforce your learning. Your knowledge and skills in these topics will develop progressively through the course.

• Fundamentals of science: Understanding how the body works and what goes wrong in disease.
• Pharmacokinetics: How the body handles drugs.
• Pharmacodynamics: How drugs exert their effects on the body.
• Drug development and clinical trials: How drugs are discovered and developed as medicines.
• Drugs in healthcare: How information from clinical trials and drug development is used to guide the use of medicines for patients in clinical practice.
• Data and statistics: How to collect, manage, analyse, present and interpret research data relating to drugs.
• Skills portfolio: Developing clinical trials, laboratory, presentation and personal skills required to be successful in a work environment and demonstrate this to employers.

Placement

All students will undertake six weeks of work experience with an employer e.g. from industry during the second year of the course. This will give you the opportunity to find out more about what it takes to be successful in the workplace and what you might want to do after this degree.

In 2021 and 2022, employers who offered work experience to our students include:

• Pharmaceutical companies – Astra Zeneca, Roche, GSK, Takeda
• Contract research organisations – LabCorp, Niche Pharmaceuticals, Richmond Pharmacology
• Pharmacovigilance and regulatory affairs – Boyd Consultants
• Research companies – HelloBio, Airfinity, Eurofins clinical diagnostics.

In addition to the guaranteed six weeks’ work experience, you will have the optional opportunity to apply for an external professional year. The application process for a professional year is to individual companies who advertise their opportunities and is competitive. If successful, you would undertake the professional year between Years 2 and 3. In 2021 and 2022 students were successful in gaining placement years with major companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Labcorp, Merck Sharp and Dohme and Sanofi. 

The supervised, hands-on experience you get with both types of placements is an excellent way to consolidate your learning and makes you extremely attractive to employers on graduation. You will gain experience of working as part of a team, demonstrating professional behaviour. You will be supervised and mentored by experienced professionals and receive support from a University tutor.

Our course is unusual in offering ALL students work experience, as well as supporting the additional professional year in those who are interested.

At St George’s we offer a broad range of learning environments which include traditional lectures, tutorials, interactive workshops, practical activities, and web-based delivery. The co-location of the University with a major hospital provides a unique opportunity to study and work alongside the full range of clinical professionals and their patients.

Studying on the Clinical Pharmacology BSc is an exciting learning experience, combining high-quality teaching and action learning or ‘learning by doing’, which we believe is the best way to learn. Each week, for example, you will learn clinical and laboratory research skills in practical classes. In ‘drug-based learning’ sessions you will work in small groups to solve clinical cases and research problems, for example, investigating the fictional case of footballer ‘Sydney Bafferman’ who collapses due to a cardiac abnormality, or working through a simulated experiment with researcher ‘Lorelei Sims’ to find out what she did wrong.

Our course includes lots of opportunities to find out more about careers that you could enter after this degree. Early in the course, lectures will be given by guest researchers or healthcare professionals. You will meet patients in workshops and have the chance to go on healthcare visits to hospital wards and pharmacy. In our regular careers series professionals discuss what it is like to work in different areas, such as pharmaceutical companies, contract research organisations, clinical trials units, healthcare, hospital management, or regulatory affairs. Later in the course all students will have six weeks’ work experience in industry and gain practical research experience.

While the St George’s programmes are recognised by many different countries, applicants are advised to check with their own individual national authorities if they wish to practise in their chosen country.

Industry-focused and with a view to getting you work-ready on graduation, our Clinical Pharmacology degree encompasses a broad spectrum of concepts and solutions – from understanding disease processes and identification of potential new drug targets to organising and running clinical trials, drug regulation and use in patients.

It has been purposefully designed with input from employers to ensure you develop the general and specialist skills they require, helping you stand out in the job market. Throughout the course you will develop transferrable skills, including oral and poster presentation, scientific writing, teamwork and peer observation, essential clinical and laboratory skills. Your competence in these will be recognised by accumulation of badges, which you can share – for example on a Linked In profile – to demonstrate your skills to employers.

Every step of your learning journey offers exciting employment possibilities, however, the six-week placement we provide every student in Year 2 provides particularly valuable workplace experience, making you highly attractive to employers. We work with dozens of small and large companies which span the full gamut of sector activities, including regulatory writing and clinical project management (e.g. Niche Pharmaceuticals), preclinical and clinical lab services (e.g. Charles River), regulatory affairs (e.g. DLRC) or medical communications (Chameleon).

Throughout the course, you will also learn about the culture and wide range of activities encompassed by Clinical Pharmacology from experts working in the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare, academia and regulation. Recent external contributors to the course include: Dr David Carlisle (Clinical Pharmacologist, Roche Pharmaceuticals), Dr Edd Humphries (Senior Research Scientist, Astra Zeneca), Dr Mark Bruce (Senior Director, Head of Translational Science and Drug Safety, ONO PHARMA UK), Chloe Bryan (Senior Clinical Research Associate, Quality Regulatory and Clinical Consultancy, Cambridge), Tim Hardman (Managing Director, Niche Science and Technology). External speakers contribute to module lectures e.g. on pharmacokinetics, drug development, drugs in healthcare, and through careers talks and panels.

After completing your degree you could go on to work in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, managing drug trials or working in the laboratory for one of the many pharmaceutical companies or contract research organisations, or assist with research and test medicines on patients in clinical trials units, hospitals or GP practices. Potential employers include the NHS and many professional and regulatory organisations, such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) or Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Alternatively, you could follow an academic route: teaching or researching disease mechanisms and identifying treatment targets for new medicines; or seek employment in the fields of scientific publishing, journalism, marketing and sales.

For more information on the range of career options, download our Clinical Pharmacology careers brochure (PDF). Should you wish to undertake further study or research at St George’s, you will be well equipped to apply for graduate-entry programmes, such as medicine or pharmacy.

Careers

• Academia (teaching or research)
• Bioanalytical company
• Biomedical company
• Biotechnical company
• Clinical trials unit – industry or healthcare
• Contract research organisation
• Large pharmaceutical company
• Publications house
• Regulatory affairs

Facilities

St George’s is the only UK university, which specialises in healthcare education and is based on a hospital site, namely St George’s Hospital, which is where the Channel 4 television series 24 hours in A&E is filmed. We offer a unique opportunity to study and work alongside the full range of clinical professionals and their patients. Based in the thriving multi-cultural hub of Tooting in South West London, our location has the added advantage of being just a short tube ride from Central London and all the city lifestyle has to offer.

We also have a range of specialist health and academic facilities to support your learning, listed below.

Laboratories

Our science laboratories are fully fitted with equipment for pharmacology, biological, chemistry, biomedical, molecular biology practicals. This includes microscopes, spectrophotometers, DNA amplifiers, organ baths and specialist glassware. We also have audio visual equipment installed, so that microscope images can be projected onto large screens.

Clinical skills facilities

You will learn the clinical skills you would need to take patients through clinical trials. Our clinical skills areas are set up as needed for students to develop clinical skills, such as the measurement of vital signs, phlebotomy and drug administration. We have a simulation suite and resuscitation facility where students can practice what to do if a clinical trial goes wrong or if someone collapses.

Library and learning technology

Our modern health sciences library offers a wide range of books, e-books, academic journals and other resources to support you. You will also have access to online resources, such as the Canvas virtual learning environment and our Hunter discovery service to help you find the information you need. The library is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and comprises silent, quiet and group learning areas, as well as four group discussion rooms.

IT facilities

We have five computer suites housing 260 workstations. Three of these suites are accessible 24 hours a day. It’s easy to find a free space with our handy real-time computer locator. We also have 75 self-service laptops available. Free Wi-Fi covers the whole campus, including all accommodation. You can use these resources to access your course materials, discussion boards and feedback through Canvas.

Apply for this course through UCAS (the University and College Admissions Service) by the UCAS January deadline in the year of entry.

How to apply

Application checklist

You must provide the following.

• Full details of your Level 2 (GCSE or equivalent) qualifications with grades.
• Full details of your Level 3 (A Level or equivalent) qualifications with achieved/predicted grades.
• A personal statement (more information about this document is available on the UCAS website). We recommend that you include in your statement a recognition that studying for a BSc in Clinical Pharmacology will include practice and study in a number of settings.
• An academic reference from your current or most recent institutions with predicted grades.

Deferred entry

We will consider applications from applicants who wish to defer entry by a year, provided you plan to use the time constructively. If you are offered a place on the course and subsequently decide to defer, you must inform us by 1 June of the year of application.

After application

Acknowledgement emails are sent out as soon as we receive your application. Please make sure that your email account is able to accept communications from St George’s as we will mainly communicate with you via email.

At the moment there are no changes to our programmes due to Covid-19.

If you start at St George's in 2023 your course will be delivered in the normal way and you can expect the full university experience from us.

If you started prior to this and would like to see the changes that were made to your programme, please visit this webpage.