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Medicine 2008 Applicants!

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Reply 80

username42059

I'm sorry that is total bull, nothing can rival my totally superly awesomely pen - it can perform magic, beat that.

I have an official VIAGRA pen. Beat that. It was supercool until the ink ran out.

Reply 81

person 34

I am SO glad I have decided not to do medicine, why dedicate your life to a job that isn't atcually that great?

Reply 82

jonacity

Random tip : join the samaritans, even if you're <18 u still might get training, interviers love it, put it in your PS and bet they'll ask it at interview, i got into 3 med schools with that...

Reply 83

GJS

34 person

I am SO glad I have decided not to do medicine, why dedicate your life to a job that isn't atcually that great?

i can't actually believe somethings i see, im holding back a flame

Reply 84

person 34

GJS

i can't actually believe somethings i see, im holding back a flame

Your point being? And a tip for prosepctive med students - show interest in other things. Don't just do w/e in hospitals, GP suregery etc etc - do others w/e.

Reply 85

candle

i dont know where to do work experiance.. am so stuck i just dont want my holiday to be wasted... :frown:

i want to do volunteer work at my GP's .. shall i call them or go to them and ask and whom shall i ask i duno :confused:

help needed...

Reply 86

doggydogfoot

apart from all the voluntary work and work experience i need extra curricular activities that i could write about. But i have only just started trampolining and am at grade 2 violin, so i can't really write these as i havn't achieved a high standard in them. I love to draw/paint though ( took it for gcse aswell), would this count? Can anyone give me any ideas for other things i could do so that i have more to write about. I'm not a very sporty person and hate team sports because i am rubbish at them.

Reply 87

Excalibur

doggydogfoot

Be proud of what you've achieved so far. Music (and any extra curriculars for that matter) are there for you to enjoy, not for you to list endless certificates of grades. :smile:

Reply 88

Jason_K

Can anyone give me any recommendations on how to get work experience/volunteer work. I had a good conversation with a lady at my local hospitala nd emailed her twice, yet got no reply after a while.

Reply 89

oxygenbubbles

xemmajanex

Oh dear. Catacylsm... you've done so much, is there any hope for the rest of us?! I'm pretty sure I want to go into Medicine... I'm doing silver DofE at the moment and planning to do gold next year, and I've also applied to learn sign language at school so hopefully I'll get to do that! For the past year I've led the Christian Union at my school with some friends in my year, and hope to continue into the sixth form. I'm going to start helping out at Sunday School as my community part of my DofE. I did fencing and ballet to quite a high level, and played netball and hockey - at the moment I do a lot of running and badminton. Erm... I did a sponsored 20-mile walk with a friend for Children In Need! (Scraping the barrel here :p:

)... I play the flute to grade 6 standard and occasionally take part in concerts. In terms of work experience, I've got a week at a hospital lined up in July, and I'm also going to do some long-term volunteering at the local hospice. This doesn't seem a lot really does it? I guess I should look into helping out at the doctor's surgery and maybe do some shadowing of doctors (if you can still do that - I'm not sure if you can any more.) I'm thinking of applying for a job as an A&E receptionist as well.

By the way Catalclysm - what's MV?

Not everyone doing medicine has gone to the lengths of building stools and such. I know I haven't. :p:

You seem to have done plenty yourself, I don't think I would say I did anymore than what you've done. Only thing is, you've mentioned working at a hospice and I know when I tried applying to work there after my GCSE's, they told me I had to be 18. So I'm considering doing it this summer instead. :smile:

Oh, and what about doing a first aid course?

Reply 90

oxygenbubbles

Starsurfer

Can anyone give me any recommendations on how to get work experience/volunteer work. I had a good conversation with a lady at my local hospitala nd emailed her twice, yet got no reply after a while.

You just have to try ringing around hospitals and offering your services, sounds rather dodgy. :p:

Do you have a VSB or anything similar? When I was doing volunteer work I went to a building called VSB where staff help you to look through their books of people looking for volunteers. I managed to get one working in a children's orthopaedic ward. I also got a free bag and many free pens. :p:

Oh and more importantly, if you do it through VSB or equivalent of what you might have wherever you live, you'll get an award of excellence which is basically an award you get after completing a certain amount of hours as a volunteer worker, and you get to go to a nice awards ceremony with free food and such. Being able to say you've got an "award of excellence for your volunteer work" sounds better than you've just done a bit on the side. It took me about 2 years to get that award because of the amount of time you have to put in, so if you're just finished GCSE's? Time to start! :smile:

Reply 91

Excalibur

oxygenbubbles

You just have to try ringing around hospitals and offering your services, sounds rather dodgy. :p:

What does VSB stand for? And was your award possibly for Millennium Volunteers?

Reply 92

oxygenbubbles

Excalibur

What does VSB stand for? And was your award possibly for Millennium Volunteers?

Voluntary Service Bureau. It was a part of that scheme, yes...I think it was for about 200 hours work.

Reply 93

-42-

Hi there,

Haven't posted for a while but I saw this topic and I fit into the post GCSE, hoping to do Medicine category student. I haven't actually done any work experience yet...although hopefully I'll get some work shadowing done in the holidays as I've sent off some letters to nearby places.

I'm thinking of doing voluntary work in a care home too, would this be relevant sort of experience? It would double up neatly as a 'service' under the Duke of Edinburgh scheme too!

--42

Reply 94

mrs_bellamy

Hellooo

All of you looking for volunteer work try http://www.do-it.org.uk
Its a really good website you put in your postcode and the type of thing you're interested in and it tells you about stuff in your area. There's a wide range of stuff on there, I heard about some of my volunteering stuff there.

Also if you're interested in working in hospital shops try WRVS http://www.wrvs.org.uk However you may be interested to know they have recently got new trolleys (to take round wards) which are dam heavy!

I've heard that some of the hospital shops are run by the Red Cross as well so maybe try them, I guess it depends on the hospital.

As loads of other people have mentioned MV is also good. I got my voluntary stuff other ways and just add up my hours with mv, but I know lots of people who found good placements with them. Think someone's already put this link but here it is again anyway http://www.millenniumvolunteers.gov.uk/

Good luck with finding stuff! :biggrin:

Reply 95

marshmallow_mayhem

Any of you thinking of doing any extra reading this early? I want to, but apart from general science magazines, I've no idea where to start.

Reply 96

Cataclysm

British Medical Journal for Students = http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/ and then click on StudentBMJ

New Scientist = www.newscientist.com

Nature via Nurture -- book by Matt Ridley, check on Amazon. (Great Book)

They're a good start; build a scrap book of interesting stuff, I've started doing this and I'm looking mainly at recent medical events/drugs/innovations -remember that Drug trial that went wrong a few weeks ago? Stuff like that and I keep adding every fortnight or so.

Reply 97

ExitMusic

Just read whatever interests you. Robert Winston's books are a good start, and if you want to move onto some pseudo-medical fiction, try The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (all about neuroscience) or Complications by Atul Gawande.

Reply 98

Cataclysm

Start watching real "behind the scenes" stuff on the Discovery Channel like Trauma Team, Untold Stories of the ER, Trauma: Life in the ER, they're interesting and sometimes there are gory scenes so you better get used to them.