TSR Med Students' Society Part III

Was just having a nosey comparing websites curricula as standard - admittedly prompted by all this 'Peninsula deserves a medal' talk - and Norwich Medical School just lept off the page...

Thanks for enlightening me. Out of interest which name do you prefer? Or does it not make a jot of difference?

Thanks for the advice!
Yeah I definitely agree about the whole OSCE thing, I mean I don't know anything about second year, but so far basically all we've been taught is BLS, which most people knew beforehand and how to take a BP!

It's something finalists do.

There have been some interesting stories in the last few years about precisely how some universities (not medical schools) have 'encouraged' students to fill them in.

Thanks for the advice!
Yeah I definitely agree about the whole OSCE thing, I mean I don't know anything about second year, but so far basically all we've been taught is BLS, which most people knew beforehand and how to take a BP!

Did they test you on it, or just teach it?

They only formally test you on practical skills etc at the end of year 2 OSCE, although they do expect you to do BLS while being 'examined' by someone else in the class, to make sure you've got the hang of it.

Ouch, what comes up in the OSCE's then?

It's a beast of a 20 station one (bit harsh for a first one with very limited clinical practice at this point, but there you go) - can include communication skills, history taking, explaining (conditions such as diabetes/asthma, and how to use an ihaler etc.), anatomy - skeletal, organ and surface, histology and blood films, guiding the blind, taking a history from a deaf person, s/c injections/drawing up insulin, hand washing, ethics, searching medline, BLS/choking etc etc. Very varied and very strange.

That's similar to ours. Just we don't have to do anything involving people with deafness/blindness yet and there are no examined medline searches or s/c injections (but we had to do venepuncture on a manikin arm this year).
Then they'll throw in random stuff like measuring prothrombin time and doing faecal occult blood tests/urinalysis (on artificial excrement/piss).

Ah, forgot about urinalysis from ours. Is there really any relevance to prothrombin time/faecal occult tests? Pre-clin OSCEs are such a bizarre exercise, failing to see the necessity.

Good luck

The preclinical course here is also gradually shifting from EMQs to SBAs and computer based exams (not sure if there were ever essay questions as part of the pre-clin course) - SBAs were just suddenly introduced into second year this year and we didn't have them in year one whereas the current freshers did from day 1. They are probably easier to mark and write and that could be why they are shifting towards them. That said, I do think MCQs<EMQs<SBAs<Essays at assessing your knowledge.

Essays are definitely a better way of assessing IMO. They do make you think a lot more rather than learning by word association which can be the case with EMQs/MCQs/SBAs. Totally agree with you on that front. That said, they are generally more stressful for students and do take a long time to mark and turn them over, so yeah, I also agree that medical schools are probably taking their finances into account which is fair enough. Whether or not they should bring essays back - erm, no. Especially if I'm still a medical student by the time they decide to.

Our semester 4 clinical skills teaching...

- gynaecological examination - bimanual palpation, bivalve (cusco) speculum examination, performing a cervical smear
- examination of the groin, hernial orifices and male external genitalia
- antenatal obstetric examination
- examining a lump (generic)
- examination of the breast
- GALS assessment
- tissue viability
- phlebotomy (manakin)
- first aid
- otoscopy and hearing assessment
- manual handling

...and any of those + anything from semesters 1 - 3 can come up in the OSCE next week. Very underprepared. It's as if we're expected to be doctors by the end of second year or something. Some may think that it's good that we're taught clinicals earlier on - I personally think it's a bit ambitious and excessive given our curriculum structure.

We had to do a urinalysis this summer and explain the results to the patient, which I think is actually reasonable. In January we simply had to perform a faecal occult blood test, which I think was entirely pointless and shouldn't be examined. The OSSEs are an area of the Keele course that I have a problem with - it feels like we're being tested for the sake of testing us with some stuff.

But I think the idea of preclinical OSSEs/OSCEs/ISCEs/whatever is actually decent. I'd prefer to get into my clinical years relatively comfortable with the format of an OSCE and the ways of dealing with them.

That's insane, how do you find the time to get all that in along with basic science teaching? What concerns me is that if Oxbridge medics are to join your year 3, are they not going to be in a totally different place clinically? Can't see how that could work.

That's insane, how do you find the time to get all that in along with basic science teaching? What concerns me is that if Oxbridge medics are to join your year 3, are they not going to be in a totally different place clinically? Can't see how that could work.

From what I gather from my friends who emigrated to London, they get a solid 2-3 week 'introduction' to clinical stuff and catch most of it up during their first term there seeing as most of that stuff isn't exactly rocket science

Well that's what we get here anyway at the start of the clinical years (as the only clinical stuff we get in yrs 1-2 is comm stuff), just seems if they've put a lot of emphasis on clinical examinations throughout pre-clin years when the oxbridge emigrators are learning it all in a couple of weeks then they're perhaps wasting time and effort on that stuff when the focus should perhaps be on medical science.

It actually complements the basic clinical sciences teaching. This entire semester has focused on reproduction, growth, ageing, mechanisms of defence, immunology etc so those sessions do follow on from the lectures, anatomy and CBL cases from that particular week. That's besides two SSCs (5000 words each), a family study (4000 words) and various other CPH/PPD/reflective assignments. The workload has indeed been insane this year.

Oxbridge transfers and third year biomed transfers get given a hench clinical skills handbook covering years 1 - 2 clinical skills and as far as I'm aware, they are expected to cover it in the summer before starting T-year. I think there are scheduled sessions for them in the summer too.

We do the same thing - token CVS/resp half days where the first and second years get really excited and do it on a actor, good day out Then come 3rd year - 3 weeks of intensive examination teaching with a OSCE at the end that you have to pass - then you're let out onto the wards.