Biomedicine vs Medicine

Pre-clinical medicine (especially year 1) will be very similar to a lot of courses in the field of biosciences. Here at Cardiff first year content is very similar to biomedical science, microbiology, genetics, etc. The only real difference is that we also do anatomy and some of the doctor stuff such as a few placements.

However, I think a lot of what we are taught in years 1 & 2 will be forgotten by the time we are doctors and isn't strictly relevant to what we'll be doing. Where as biomedicine graduates would have had more extensive basic science teaching and therefore I should imagine be far more knowledgable in the science underpinning a lot of modern medcine than what we as medical graduates would be.

So, I was just wondering.

I'm doing first year and my biomed buddies pretty much seem to have identical lectures and whatnot to me. I know it's pretty similar for the basic sciences and obviously biomed doesn't have the clinical years but I couldn't help but wonder whether there is any significant difference in terms of scientific knowledge between a biomed grad and a med grad.

Any of the more senior students from either course know?

(and please don't say stuff like one degree is better than the other etc. That's just being plain silly. I just wanna know objectively. )

There absolutely is a difference even if on the surface the two courses appear to be the same. The difference is in three main areas in my experience:

1) clinical medicine vs basic science
2) breadth vs depth
3) lab work

Using the example of diabetes, regarding point 1, at med school you learn about diabetes in the context of the different types (type 1, 2, MODY, etc) as well as complications e.g. diabetic ketoacidosis and their management.

In biomed you do learn about diabetes, but instead of learning about the clinical significance and implications of the condition, you learn much more about the basic science behind it e.g. the differences between preproinsulin, proinsulin and insulin, the mechanisms used in genetic engineering of insulin, etc. Stuff which no medical undergraduate is taught.

Which brings me onto point number 2. In a biomed course, there is a heavy emphasis on depth of knowledge. It is not enough to simply know that genetic aberrations can lead to cancer: you need to know the exact signalling pathways which are affected and how they are affected and the molecular implications of that. Whereas in med school, the material which is taught is not particularly in depth, but there is a very large amount of it which needs to be learnt.

Point 3 is pretty obvious: a biomed degree has a lot more practical lab work. The point of med school is not to make a lab scientist out of you, so there are very little to no lab sessions in med school.

So in conclusion, yes, superficially biomed and pre-clinical medicine are very similar but the endocrinology module that a biomed student does is very different to that which a med student does, because the degrees are fundamentally very different. Medicine is a vocational, professional course, and biomedical sciences is a theoretical science degree.

I agree, a lot of biomeds in my year find the pre-clinical years much easier than other students

The content is simpler in my experience, but the volume takes getting used to!

I'm still not used to how much we have to do!