The Student Room Group

Advice on PBL at HYMS

I got an offer from HYMS and Cardiff (which is a more traditional uni than HYMS) I am still trying to decide where to go. Is PBL like teaching yourself medicine or are you offered a lot of help and support? I generally find that when other people explain something to me it sticks in my head better than if I study it on my own. Is this likely to be a problem for me if I study at HYMS? Do you have any more advice for me that might pertain to which uni I should choose?
goodgirl2010
I got an offer from HYMS and Cardiff (which is a more traditional uni than HYMS) I am still trying to decide where to go. Is PBL like teaching yourself medicine or are you offered a lot of help and support? I generally find that when other people explain something to me it sticks in my head better than if I study it on my own. Is this likely to be a problem for me if I study at HYMS? Do you have any more advice for me that might pertain to which uni I should choose?

Congrats on your offers :smile: You will have to do some degree of teaching yourself wherever you go. Lectures are supposed to be introductions to topics that you then go and read around. With the PBL course, you will have a case at the start of the week which you read through in small groups and discuss, with the help of a facilitator to keep you on track and make sure you don't miss anything, and come up with a list of learning objectives to look at. This will prob be things like the organ systems involved in the case, the drugs that could be used to treat, the social factors influencing the patient, etc. You will have a few lectures introducing you to the same things and then at the end of the week you will come back and present what you found to your PBL group, covering the discussion topics you set down in the first session. There will be lecturers on hand at the end of emails and in offices to go to if you have trouble with something, so you won't be completely on your own trying to teach yourself med, but you will have a lot to look at yourself. If you learn best in lectures (and can stay awake in them!), then go for the more traditional course, but be aware that it won't all be spoon-fed to you and you will still have to teach yourself bits. You should also look at the other aspects of the course like the exam styles, the clinical teaching styles, the types of placements you'll get, how far you're likely to have to travel and how easy it will be to do so and use these to make your mind up. Good luck with your decision making!

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