The article describes the principles of forming linguistic and communicative competence in future doctors during their studies at medical higher education institutions with a view to popularisation medical knowledge, and substantiates the content and structure of a special linguistic discipline in the Ukrainian language for popularisation medical knowledge. The regulatory documents of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, which describe the qualification characteristics of professionals in the field of medicine and dentistry, emphasise the importance of the multifaceted activities of doctors in disseminating medical knowledge among the population. The current educational standard in the healthcare sector does not include a component that would promote the development of language skills for popularisation medical knowledge. Therefore, it is important to introduce the study of the peculiarities of the linguistic structure and production of relevant genres of popular scientific medical language into the curricula of higher medical education institutions. It is proposed to introduce a special component in one of the senior courses to develop future doctors’ linguistic and communicative competence in popularisation medical knowledge – the academic discipline ‘Ukrainian Language Popularisation of Medical Knowledge’. This discipline is intended for higher education students who have already studied several disciplines in the professional training cycle and have sufficient background knowledge to independently create high-quality popular science texts on the medical disciplines they have studied. As a result of studying the discipline, higher education students should know the terminology of popular science medical text creation, the genre structure of popular medical discourse, be able to create works in relevant genres of popular medical discourse, and master the linguistic norms of popular medical style. The possibility of introducing topics for the formation of linguistic and communicative competence in the popularisation of medical knowledge into the compulsory course of the Ukrainian language (for professional purposes) with the addition of credits in the fourth and fifth years of study is justified. The possibility of introducing a similar discipline for higher education students of various fields and specialities is indicated.