Physician Associate Studies: Offer holder next steps

Many applicants will have received more than one offer and so, at this point, you will be choosing between different universities. You are strongly encouraged to visit all the universities from which you’ve received an offer. We will let you know about any specific opportunities to visit Manchester in due course.

Once you’ve decided where you want to go, you must formally respond to all of your offers via UCAS Hub, and there is a deadline for you to do so. You’ll be asked to select a 'firm' and 'insurance' choice when you respond.

The deadline for you to respond will vary based on when you’ve received a decision from all of your choices. The date by which you must respond will be indicated on UCAS Hub, but you can refer to the UCAS website for further information.

The Offer Holder Declaration (OHD) is a really important document and covers information about a number of different areas.

We will be in contact and provide a link once it is available.

When submitting your OHD, please do not put dashes or spaces in your UCAS ID number.

Criminal record declaration

All applicants will eventually be required to provide a satisfactory enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service check (or overseas equivalent), but this will only be required once your offer becomes unconditional, for example, once you have satisfied all the academic and non-academic conditions of your offer.

For all applicants, unless you are an overseas applicant, the DBS application will be initiated from around July (once your offer conditions have been confirmed) and will be sent to you by the teaching and learning team within the School with further information.

The OHD form asks you to make a self-declaration detailing whether you have had any sort of criminal conviction and that you understand that and agree to cooperate with the formal DBS procedure in due course.

Please note that our offer of a place is conditional on you having disclosed any convictions, cautions, reprimands or final warnings to us during the application process, and this is the final point at which you have to do so.

However, should you receive any sort of criminal conviction, as mentioned, after you have submitted your OHD, you must inform the Admissions team immediately and in writing. Failure to provide any update may affect your offer of a place.

Excluded students database

In the interests of patient and public safety, we also share some of the information provided in your application form with the Medical/Dental Schools Councils in order to verify your fitness to practice. See the Medical Schools Council privacy policy for the excluded students database (PDF).

If a fitness to practice outcome is made against you in the future, this information and a copy of the decision against you will also be stored on a central database which is accessible only to other schools with courses leading to entry to a registered profession in the UK. It is used only for proper fitness to practice purposes to protect patients and the public.

You have a right of access to any information held about you on the database and to correct any errors if they exist. If you wish to exercise that right, please contact us.

Our offer of a place is conditional on you having disclosed all fitness to practice outcomes against you, and your consent being given to the use of this information.

If you have declared a fitness to practice outcome on your OHD, you will be contacted by the Admissions team to provide further information on the nature of the outcome. This will then be reviewed by the Academic Lead for Admissions for the relevant course as to whether it prohibits your training on the Physician Associate course.

If you have any questions with regards to this, please contact the Admissions team.

The Offer Holder Declaration asks you to declare whether you have ever been subject to fitness to practice proceedings at another institution. It also asks you whether you have failed to complete any healthcare programme at another institution, regardless of a fitness to practice outcome.

Qualification verification

You will be required to upload copies of any achieved qualifications, for example, your GCSE, or degree certificates, to be verified via your applicant portal on MyManchester.

We require copies of all academic qualifications declared on your UCAS form as having already been achieved, and the qualifications we require verification for will be made clear to you in your portal.

Please note that we only require scans of your academic qualifications. We do not require certificates related to your non-academic activities. You do not need to upload scans of qualifications that are still in progress.

If you decide to make Manchester your firm choice, we will need to ensure that you are medically fit to commence the programme.

This process is managed by the University’s Occupational Health Service, and the first step is to complete and return the Health Screening Questionnaire. You will be notified by the Admissions team when the health questionnaire is ready to be completed.

For full information on the health screening process, please refer to the following document: Occupational Health Screening Process (PDF).

You will be notified by the Admissions team with regards to next steps for this in due course.

Childhood vaccinations

You will be required to bring along evidence of your childhood vaccinations to your first screening appointment, so please ensure you gather these in advance to bring with you to Manchester.

In the interests of patient safety, your offer is also conditional upon you providing a satisfactory enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check (or international equivalent).

The University uses a fast and paperless e-Disclosures system to manage DBS applications. Subject to you meeting your offer conditions (for example, your A-level results and other non-academic conditions), you will receive a link to a DBS application form via email.  

Once the application is complete, it will be processed at the 'enhanced' level. The results will be returned to us electronically and you will receive the paper certificate via post.

The online DBS application form will be sent subject to meeting the conditions of the offer (from around July) 

You will need to have been cleared to start the programme by the first day of term. We are unable to allow you to begin early clinical placements without a DBS check being cleared.

Overseas checks

For applicants who are currently domiciled overseas or who have spent six months or more living overseas in the past five years, we will require an overseas criminal records check. If your time has been split between the UK and overseas during this period, we will need you to provide both the DBS clearance and the overseas certificate.

The Home Office provides a useful summary of how to apply for this type of clearance in most countries across the world: Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (GOV.UK). Clearance certificates can be emailed to us directly at pgtaught.medicine.pa@manchester.ac.uk.

Please note that if you are required to provide an overseas criminal record check, we will need a certificate that covers your entire time overseas, therefore we advise sending through updated clearance certificates in August/September. The Admissions team will send a reminder about this nearer the time.