TSR Med Students&#x27; Society Part III

Original post by Mushi_master

Man I hate mornings.

****ing tell me about it. I don't even know where I am.

Reply 8601

Renal

Original post by Helenia

It would be quite effective but it tastes vile so if your stomach is a bit wobbly you may have trouble keeping it down. You can make it more palatable with sugar-free squash.

Powerade.

It's like Hartmann's but blue flavoured.

Reply 8602

Madprof

12

Original post by beccy.

manchester??
i know the 5th years got their results today!!

well done regardless!!

Nope, Oxford. But hope all your 5th years did well too :smile:

Original post by Digitalis

Congratulations!! What did your email say! Does it say the whole 'Congratulations Dr Madprof' like it did on Junior Doctors?! *finals excitement*

Thanks! Email was very disappointing actually - just a group email saying 'I will be contacting these people to discuss their position <list of candidate nos>. Everyone else has passed second BM (our finals) in full.' :frown:

But lovely congratulatory email from tutor this am addressed to 'Dr Madprof' made up for it!

Original post by Elles

In my year there were a couple of surprise OSCE fails. Rubbish. I think there was a rescue OSCE a few days later, then the summer resit.
One person in my year resat the year later & passed.

Resat the year? Ouch. Tough after having got this far ... thought that only happened after a quiet chat earlier in final year. Had heard rumours about your year being the one where everyone passed ... must have got the maths wrong, or maybe TL was just trying to stir up some inter-year competition!

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 8603

xconfetti

Original post by Lantana

It sounds like they've changed the hospital visits for the better from last year. What did you get up to?

Got to interview 6 patients and sit in on an MDT meeting :smile:

Was more interesting because of the actual patients we were given. I know lots of people who got to do practical stuff though, and some people got given a list of names and asked to take obs from the patients!

Reply 8604

xconfetti

1st ever OSCE today, only a mock but still. Scary!!

Reply 8605

SabreT

4

The muscles of the larynx make me want to tear my head off.

Reply 8606

To the finalists, how much pre-clinical stuff actually comes up in these exams? I'm starting to hate this year again and have lost all motivation, cba to get out of bed, sleeping patterns **** yada yada and am starting to consider jacking it in again.

I spoke to an older year who told me that they seriously couldn't remember bugger all from pre-clin and that clinical year was MUCH better (sounds familiar to what a second year said last year but whatever) and didn't intend to look at much of it again. How much of this is actually true? I don't want to power through this with a basic knowledge under the intention of smashing clinical years but find myself either shot in the foot or having to do it all again anyway for finals.

Reply 8607

Madprof

12

Original post by RollerBall

To the finalists, how much pre-clinical stuff actually comes up in these exams? I'm starting to hate this year again and have lost all motivation, cba to get out of bed, sleeping patterns **** yada yada and am starting to consider jacking it in again.

I spoke to an older year who told me that they seriously couldn't remember bugger all from pre-clin and that clinical year was MUCH better (sounds familiar to what a second year said last year but whatever) and didn't intend to look at much of it again. How much of this is actually true? I don't want to power through this with a basic knowledge under the intention of smashing clinical years but find myself either shot in the foot or having to do it all again anyway for finals.

Not an awful lot. It's more the general concepts that you build on in clinical years. I would definitely agree with the other people you've spoken to. At Oxford at least, clinical years are less pressured (though less holiday) and are more about practice than cramming facts into your brain (although there's been a lot of that too in the lead-up to finals but not as intensely as for pre-clinical exams).

Reply 8608

GodspeedGehenna

3

Did a PR on a model today. Living the dream.

Reply 8609

ThisLittlePiggy

12

Original post by GodspeedGehenna

Did a PR on a model today. Living the dream.

Wait until the real things. So much warmer than you'd ever imagine, really odd when you ask them to squeeze to asess tone.

Reply 8610

Original post by GodspeedGehenna

Did a PR on a model today. Living the dream.

You made me LOL! I saw a great cartoon about PRs the other day:

Reply 8611

Original post by RollerBall

To the finalists, how much pre-clinical stuff actually comes up in these exams? I'm starting to hate this year again and have lost all motivation, cba to get out of bed, sleeping patterns **** yada yada and am starting to consider jacking it in again.

I spoke to an older year who told me that they seriously couldn't remember bugger all from pre-clin and that clinical year was MUCH better (sounds familiar to what a second year said last year but whatever) and didn't intend to look at much of it again. How much of this is actually true? I don't want to power through this with a basic knowledge under the intention of smashing clinical years but find myself either shot in the foot or having to do it all again anyway for finals.

You do need to know basic science, but not to the level of preclinical years. What you need it for is practical application of knowledge. **** like being asked about malignant hyperthermia in anaesthetics and trotting out all that stuff about ryanodine receptors and calcium release from skeletal muscle SR. (Real life pimping last week). In terms of finals, you won't really be tested on basic science at all. But don't forget, you will remeet basic science for membership exams, in mega depth. Unfortunately there is no hiding from it.

Clinical years come with their own challenges. Personally, I have found them on the whole to be immensely boring. The amount of time spent quite literally standing around is astonishing. The upside of this is that hospitals are big enough places that you can quietly lose yourself in them if things are bad on your home ward.

I have to say, I cannot wait to leave medical school. Been like this for a while now.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 8612

Original post by xconfetti

Got to interview 6 patients and sit in on an MDT meeting :smile:

Was more interesting because of the actual patients we were given. I know lots of people who got to do practical stuff though, and some people got given a list of names and asked to take obs from the patients!

Seems like you got the better deal!

Reply 8613

Becca-Sarah

19

Original post by digitalis

You do need to know basic science, but not to the level of preclinical years. What you need it for is practical application of knowledge. **** like being asked about malignant hyperthermia in anaesthetics and trotting out all that stuff about ryanodine receptors and calcium release from skeletal muscle SR. (Real life pimping last week). In terms of finals, you won't really be tested on basic science at all. But don't forget, you will remeet basic science for membership exams, in mega depth. Unfortunately there is no hiding from it.

Clinical years come with their own challenges. Personally, I have found them on the whole to be immensely boring. The amount of time spent quite literally standing around is astonishing. The upside of this is that hospitals are big enough places that you can quietly lose yourself in them if things are bad on your home ward.

I have to say, I cannot wait to leave medical school. Been like this for a while now.

How do you think clinical years could be improved? Is the current state a case of just too many students per ward/firm, reluctance of docs to do spontaneous teaching, or what?

Reply 8614

Original post by crazylemon

Wait I didn't know you failed the year :frown:

Imperial seems to have been harsh on our year and the year below (I have heard some people have been asked to wait a year before retaking :eek:

)

I didn't fail the year, I worded myself quite poorly. I'm still a second year, I'm just starting to resent this year as much as the first.

Original post by Madprof

Not an awful lot. It's more the general concepts that you build on in clinical years. I would definitely agree with the other people you've spoken to. At Oxford at least, clinical years are less pressured (though less holiday) and are more about practice than cramming facts into your brain (although there's been a lot of that too in the lead-up to finals but not as intensely as for pre-clinical exams).

It's not the pressure it's the lack of care. I just really don't give a **** about the minute reactions of BDNF and NGF, especially when 50 clinical papers cite them as doing sweet **** all clinically.

Original post by digitalis

You do need to know basic science, but not to the level of preclinical years. What you need it for is practical application of knowledge. **** like being asked about malignant hyperthermia in anaesthetics and trotting out all that stuff about ryanodine receptors and calcium release from skeletal muscle SR. (Real life pimping last week). In terms of finals, you won't really be tested on basic science at all. But don't forget, you will remeet basic science for membership exams, in mega depth. Unfortunately there is no hiding from it.

Clinical years come with their own challenges. Personally, I have found them on the whole to be immensely boring. The amount of time spent quite literally standing around is astonishing. The upside of this is that hospitals are big enough places that you can quietly lose yourself in them if things are bad on your home ward.

I have to say, I cannot wait to leave medical school. Been like this for a while now.

Wait, so they expect you to recite the stuff you learnt in the first two/three years of medical school in your membership years five or six years later? What. The. ****.

I'm not supposed to have a flying ****ing clue about that **** you just said about hypothermia, right? I know you were always big on the science aspect so I'm hoping I don't.

I'm normally pretty good finding something to do when there's nothing to do so hopefully I won't find clinical years a drag. That or maybe I'm just relying on my blind optimism which has helped me this far.

Reply 8615

Original post by Becca-Sarah

How do you think clinical years could be improved? Is the current state a case of just too many students per ward/firm, reluctance of docs to do spontaneous teaching, or what?

Multifactorial, like most things. Student numbers are of course important factors.

I think a huge part of it is attitudinal. Compare medical students to nursing students. Nursing students are hands on from day 1 of their clinical teams, involved intimately in caring for their patients. Medical teams do ask them stuff about how they are getting on etc and they know stuff. They are literally 'student nurses'.

Med students on the other hand are seen and treated as observers, from third year to fifth year. I have noticed absolutely no change in the way I am treated. All I do is shadow the doctor, stand at the back of the ward round/surgery, sit in the back of a clinic half hidden by a curtain for a half day. It isn't as if I don't try, but for example on my surgical firm the reg flat out refused to have me write in the notes. That is a simple, simple task.

Medical students are not given any patient responsibilities at all. They never carry their own patients, present them, speak to relatives, speak to other teams, make referrals, book scans bla bla bla. You get to 'shadow prescribe' and 'shadow clerk' etc but nothing serious. Then everyone berates the FY1 for being useless...well they never really got to practise during their clinical apprenticeship so do you blame them? A few weeks of shadowing can't make up for three years of doing diddly squat.

I would change it by firstly exposing the amount of SIFT funding hospitals get. As an occy health doctor told us, we are commodities to hospitals that are tight for cash. At the present, they get a lot of money in return for not a lot. And I predict medical student attitudes to spending days standing around the nurses desk is going to change dramatically with the next generation paying increased fees and burdened with more debt.

Then I would insist as a medical school that the consultants instigate a more integrated method of involving medical students in their firms. They should be seen and treated as student doctors, much the way student nurses are integrated into their ward teams. The culture of ridicule and depreciation of med students needs to disappear, it is honestly unacceptable for people to not care what their students names are after nine weeks, or to call them 'peasants' to their face (true story). At the very least, third years are 21 year olds who in any other job would be graduating that year. 5th years would be two years into employment!

I would make sure each student is assigned patients, increasing numbers as they go up through the years. So third years say look after two patients, fourth years three, fifth years four or whatever. Every day, they are to go see their patient, look up results, write up an entry on some continuation paper, produce a plan etc that is checked by the team. Then they go off and carry out that management plan. I would reinstate personalised feedback forms for students and scrap the logbooks and put a fear of failing back into students who don't turn up. The way I would like it is that especially as a final year, you would be such a part of the team that if you didn't turn up, you would be missed.

Of course, this is all wishful thinking. The barriers are huge, the fact that medical schools rely on a limited supply of hospitals (look at London as an example) and therefore almost have to take what they have been offered. Teams are often fixed in their ways, consultants even more so. Hospital systems would have to change, people would have to change their whole attitude to students.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 8616

Original post by RollerBall

Wait, so they expect you to recite the stuff you learnt in the first two/three years of medical school in your membership years five or six years later? What. The. ****.

I'm not supposed to have a flying ****ing clue about that **** you just said about hypothermia, right? I know you were always big on the science aspect so I'm hoping I don't.

I'm normally pretty good finding something to do when there's nothing to do so hopefully I won't find clinical years a drag. That or maybe I'm just relying on my blind optimism which has helped me this far.

Dude, I know how you feel. Second year was ****. Low point of my life.

I honestly can't remember if we covered it in second year, but it was just an example. I was never big on science until I realised how little I knew in third year tbh, but I know your course has changed a lot from mine.

You do have to know it for MRCP/MRCS/FRCA that is for sure. MRCS Part 1 is huge on basic science, and that's for a surgeon! :tongue:

That was why I was so peeved with Barts, they basically taught us nothing of it during our preclinical years and fed everyone the lie that 'you don't need to know any of this stuff in clinical practice'; that may be true but you do need it for membership exams and if you didn't have that knowledge base to begin with, it is actual learning not just revision!

Reply 8617

Kinkerz

15

Original post by digitalis

Spoiler

Did you find it closer to your ideal in the US?

Reply 8618

Original post by digitalis

Dude, I know how you feel. Second year was ****. Low point of my life.

I honestly can't remember if we covered it in second year, but it was just an example. I was never big on science until I realised how little I knew in third year tbh, but I know your course has changed a lot from mine.

You do have to know it for MRCP/MRCS/FRCA that is for sure. MRCS Part 1 is huge on basic science, and that's for a surgeon! :tongue:

That was why I was so peeved with Barts, they basically taught us nothing of it during our preclinical years and fed everyone the lie that 'you don't need to know any of this stuff in clinical practice'; that may be true but you do need it for membership exams and if you didn't have that knowledge base to begin with, it is actual learning not just revision!

Yeah, I'm starting to feel pretty crap at the moment as well. Don't get me wrong I had lack of motivation last year but this year I struggle to find a reason to get out of bed unless my girlfriend is coming over. Not even video games keep me entertained for very long which is ****ed up.

SSC week with Med Ed next though, hopefully it'll perk up a bit. I'm 99% sure we haven't covered hypothermia, I don't even see where that would fit into the wierd blocks of Metabolism, CR, Met, Loco and B&B. Maybe CR? It definetly wasn't in CR though, nor met.

Reply 8619