The School of Clinical Medicine, headed by Professor Richard Hift, encompasses all the clinical disciplines with the exception of Family Medicine . The academic staff provide specialist clinical services to the people of KwaZulu-Natal in partnership with the provincial Department of Health, play a key role in the training of health care professionals at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, and undertake basic and applied research in the clinical sciences.

Clinical services are broadly divided into those at tertiary and quaternary level, provided primarily though not exclusively at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital (Durban) and Grey’s Hospital (Pietermaritzburg), and secondary services, based at King Edward VIII Hospital, Addington Hospital, Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Prince Mshiyeni Hospital and RK Khan Hospital in Durban, and Edendale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg.

At undergraduate level, the schools primary responsibility is to students in the fourth to sixth years of the MBChB curriculum. Though lectures and tutorials on given on campus at the medical school, the bulk of this teaching takes place at these various hospitals in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, largely in the form of bedside tutorials and supervision of the interaction of students with patients in the course of the routine clinical management of patients.

the majority of postgraduate students within the school are enrolled in a four-year programme towards the master of medicine (MMed) degree, during which they are examined by the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, a national educational, examination and accreditation body representing medical specialists. On successful completion of the programme, the students are eligible for registration as specialists by the Health Professions Council of South Africa. Though registered as a full-time students, they are simultaneously in full-time employment as registrars by the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Department of Health, and rotate through hospitals in Durban, Pietermaritzburg and elsewhere where they provide essential clinical services while simultaneously gaining the experience, knowledge and skills to equip themselves for specialist practice. There is a compulsory research component to the MMed degree which introduces the students to the ethos and methodology of research