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IT’S the first day in your new job as a trainee doctor, and in walks a middle aged man with hearing problems.

You sit him down in and begin to take his history. He is a carpenter by trade and - until recently - a cricket umpire on the weekends, but he has had to hang up his umpire’s coat because he could no longer hear the sound of bat-on-ball. 

Now it is up to you to help him return to the wicket.... how do you proceed?

This was the scenario faced by 30 students on their very first day at the University of Nicosia’s gleaming new medical school, which opened on Monday. 

It is a pioneering achievement for the university, offering the island’s first medical degree: a four year, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS)

The course is jointly run with St George’s University in London and is based on the innovative problem based learning (PBL) model. It’s taught in English and open to graduates at a cost of €25,000 per year. In theory the course is open to graduates with Bachelor’s degrees from any discipline, but applicants with non-science degrees have to take a tough entrance exam testing them on their scientific knowledge.

The students, who have come from as far afield as Canada, the UK and New Zealand and were selected from a pool of around 400 hopefuls, will spend the first two years in Cyprus and the second two at the Sheba Medical Centre in Israel to gain clinical experience. Two students are from Cyprus.

It is an unorthodox yet, according to its proponents, a highly effective teaching system that immerses students in the world of medicine, tapping into people’s natural learning ability instead of the more passive lecture based learning method.  

In practice, this means that from day one the students are working on medical problems, by day three they are meeting real patients and before their first weekend will be firing questions to visiting consultants about their case. 

Executive dean Andreas Charalambous talks me through the course as we tour the gleaming new building.

“(The PBL principle) is based on hundreds of years of experience,” he says. “Cognitive psychology tells us that this is how the human body learns.

“The whole course is structured around problems. The students get to know the gaps in their knowledge and try to reach diagnosis.”

It sounds a bit like the TV show, House, I suggest to him: “It is in a way. (Throughout each week) the pieces come together as the students study.”

But if the course is reminiscent of House, the medical centre, with its sleek minimalist furnishings, looks more like something out of the high tech set of 24.

The decor is (for now at least) Spartan, the furniture minimalist and the smell of fresh paint still in the air, and it is quiet.

A few of the staff mill around - in one room we meet the course director from St George’s, Professor Peter McCrory, who will spend the next few months in Cyprus to oversee the centre’s early development.

First I am shown the case study discussion rooms, where groups of seven or eight students team up to work through their weekly case studies. Everything seems to have been thought of - even down to the fridge for students’ snacks during late sessions.

In some of the rooms, industrious students pore over diagrams of ear canals and white boards filled with jottings from their last group brainstorm.

The centre is also fully equipped with computer clusters equipped with e-learning facilities and where tests are carried out simultaneously with the sister school in London. 

One Swiss student, Matthew Wright, said: “It has been intensive but really good, really enjoyable. On my third day I spoke to an 80-year-old lady with hearing loss.”

There is a sizable library, a testing lab and even an anatomy centre, complete with four German cadavers. 

Adjacent to the main building is a second that will soon house 18 fully equipped examination rooms, mimicking hospital emergency rooms in which students can practice their clinical skills on paid actors, hired from local theatre. 

Over the coming years, the 30 students are expected to increase to 150, with the centre eventually becoming a focal point for local medical practitioners to come and research. Soon it will even be ready to accept foreign PBL’ers in their third and fourth years.

Nicosia’s students will in turn spend their final two years at the Sheba medical centre in Israel.

The overriding impression as we walk the immaculate halls is the sheer scale of investment - of both time and money.

Charalambous is coy about the precise costs, instead emphasising this is secondary to the prestige it brings to the University of Nicosia, and to the Cypriot medical profession in general.

“I can say that it is a multi-million euro investment... It is a very expensive programme to run properly, and that is how we are doing it. “

For example, with around 45 faculty staff, and a further 15 support staff, the current teacher student ration is around two to one. “The revenue from students’ fees does not even cover half of the cost of salaries, but in time this will be profitable.”

And he has high hopes for the future of medicine in Cyprus once the school is established. In the pipeline is a plan for organ donation, dedicated research centres for illnesses such as Thalassaemia, and greater integration with the local government hospitals.

The results, believes Charalambous, will also mean citizens eventually enjoy a better level of care, and put Cyprus on the medical research map.

“This project makes academic sense. It completes the university and it is extremely important for engaging the medical community in Cyprus who have really embraced it. 

“I believe that this centre is not just the jewel in the crown of the University of Nicosia, but of the whole of Cyprus’ higher educational system,” he said. 

“It offers students a unique opportunity for an exciting international experience in medical education.”