diploma of general training in medical sciences (DFGSM)

What does the first cycle contain?

After the year of access through PASS or a LAS, the student completes two further years devoted to anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and the other fundamental sciences, together with semiology, the grammar of clinical signs. Hospital contact begins in this cycle, in the form of a nursing placement and early clinical attachments. The diploma awarded at the end carries 180 ECTS credits and corresponds to the bachelor level of the European framework.

Why does the credit level matter?

Because the cycle is expressed in ECTS credits, it can be read by universities and authorities in other European countries. That is what makes a comparison with a course followed elsewhere possible at all, and what a faculty examines when a student asks to transfer. The credits themselves do not create a right to transfer: each faculty decides on the basis of the syllabus actually completed and the places available.

What does this mean for students from the Maghreb?

A student from Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia enrolled in a French faculty follows exactly this cycle. A student enrolled in another EU member state follows the equivalent first cycle of that country, also expressed in ECTS credits, which is the currency in which the two courses can be compared. Keeping the detailed transcript of records from the start, and not only the final diploma, saves a great deal of effort in any later procedure, whether in France or on returning home.

A common misunderstanding

The DFGSM is sometimes taken for a qualification that allows work in healthcare. It does not: it is an intermediate university diploma inside the medical curriculum. The right to practise comes much later, with the state diploma of doctor of medicine conferred by the these d'exercice and, for practice in France, registration with the Ordre National des Medecins.