How is Manchester for medicine?

I'm going to put this question out there in the hope that someone will give some an honest reply. I've heard the lectures are pretty crap (however this is coming from someone who decided to stop attending the majority of them...because they were so poor) can someone offer an alternative perspective?

Just for an example, a friend of mine from school went to a lecture on a particular disease or something, and she said the lecturer literally just read the NHS choices website out to them...

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Original post by ameelia22

I'm going to put this question out there in the hope that someone will give some an honest reply. I've heard the lectures are pretty crap (however this is coming from someone who decided to stop attending the majority of them...because they were so poor) can someone offer an alternative perspective?

Just for an example, a friend of mine from school went to a lecture on a particular disease or something, and she said the lecturer literally just read the NHS choices website out to them...

Sorry I can't offer an alternative perspective but I'll echo this. Lectures are pretty useless. In pre-clinical years, the lecturers do not teach to curriculum. They either go way over the top detail for medicine and scare you or they teach you irrelevant stuff. Sometimes too clinical for undergrad and sometimes cover stuff already covered in PBL.

I attended all lectures in semester 1, attended sporadically semester 2-4. My honest advice is not to bother with lectures. But then PBL is not much better when it comes to curriculum coverage. Just get a book and learn all about the topic out of it.

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Original post by Hydromancer

Sorry I can't offer an alternative perspective but I'll echo this. Lectures are pretty useless. In pre-clinical years, the lecturers do not teach to curriculum. They either go way over the top detail for medicine and scare you or they teach you irrelevant stuff. Sometimes too clinical for undergrad and sometimes cover stuff already covered in PBL.

I attended all lectures in semester 1, attended sporadically semester 2-4. My honest advice is not to bother with lectures. But then PBL is not much better when it comes to curriculum coverage. Just get a book and learn all about the topic out of it.

Oh man. But if you don't go to lectures, how do you know what'll come up in exams? Like what sort of questions they'll ask, how detailed you need to be?

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Original post by ameelia22

Oh man. But if you don't go to lectures, how do you know what'll come up in exams? Like what sort of questions they'll ask, how detailed you need to be?

You don't. I's guesswork. The lectures are usually totally irrelevant to the exams and some of the stuff in PBL will be irrelevant. There's a huge disconnect between teaching and exams. It's what makes preclinical years at Manchester so frustrating. You realise in clinical years how badly the preclinical course prepares you for clinical years.

Clinical years are much better and predictable in this regard

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Original post by Hydromancer

You don't. I's guesswork. The lectures are usually totally irrelevant to the exams and some of the stuff in PBL will be irrelevant. There's a huge disconnect between teaching and exams. It's what makes preclinical years at Manchester so frustrating. You realise in clinical years how badly the preclinical course prepares you for clinical years.

Clinical years are much better and predictable in this regard

So what an earth are you guys doing?

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Original post by ameelia22

So what an earth are you guys doing?

You figure it out in time. Basically, the weekly PBL case addresses a particular topic. You should (ideally) read up all the physiology, pathophysiology, psychosocial issues around that topic even if some of those topics were not your agreed learning agenda within the PBL group. I don't know how it is this year but at the end of the week, we would get all the learning objectives for that week and these are the learning objectives that get tested in exams...although often these are very broad curriculum statements.

It's not that bad...you do get the hang of it.

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Original post by Hydromancer

You figure it out in time. Basically, the weekly PBL case addresses a particular topic. You should (ideally) read up all the physiology, pathophysiology, psychosocial issues around that topic even if some of those topics were not your agreed learning agenda within the PBL group. I don't know how it is this year but at the end of the week, we would get all the learning objectives for that week and these are the learning objectives that get tested in exams...although often these are very broad curriculum statements.

It's not that bad...you do get the hang of it.

Fo' real?!

So I'm assuming the reading list / recommended textbooks are pretty much crucial?

Someone mentioned on another thread related to medicine that they were suprised with how little effort they were able to pass the medical exams for first year, and actually they were a bit worried about the cohort of doctors being produced if they continued being so easy.... thoughts? [EDIT: found source]
]

(edited 10 years ago)

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Original post by ameelia22

Fo' real?!

So I'm assuming the reading list / recommended textbooks are pretty much crucial?

Someone mentioned on another thread related to medicine that they were suprised with how little effort they were able to pass the medical exams for first year, and actually they were a bit worried about the cohort of doctors being produced if they continued being so easy.... thoughts? [EDIT: found source]

]

Recommended texts don't really matter to be honest. You just need to find a standard textbook you like (for physiology etc.) and stick to it. When I say broad, it could be stuff like (as an example off the top of my head) "know about adaptive and innate immunity"...you just have to figure out yourself how much you need to know about this (there are whole books on this topic). You'll see a lot of people going into specialised immunology texts in the library but really you can pass with honours/distinction (awarded to around top 15% in each exam) with simply knowing stuff in a general pathology text inside out.

Regarding the difficulty, that comment was in 2010 and Manchester have made efforts to make the course more rigorous since and our year (2010 entry) was the first to get learning objectives for students. I understand there are various mid-semester assessments now that requires more consistent learning. I found year 1 quite rigorous actually, although I have a tendency to go over the top. I agree that if you intend to scrape a pass mark then that might not be too difficult. Year 2 is a step up and requires more effort. In the clinical years, I find our OSCEs to be fairly challenging and generally I think the standard is good. There is initially a bit of a gulf in pure basic science knowledge between us and the St. Andrews lot (they join the course in year 3) but Manchester medics catch up rapidly over the clinical course and there's no difference in exam results.

Having said that, there isn't as much as anatomy as there should be on the year 1+2 exams and I just feel that the pre-clinical course doesn't prepare you well for the clinical years due to the sporadic coverage of certain important topics while certain topics are over-emphasised (e.g. psychosocial theories) and don't actually seem relevant to everyday clinical practice you encounter. Oh and the early clinical experience is a gimmick.

Don't worry! Learn the appropriate topics and work hard and you'll be as good a doctor as any. I think that some people are less knowledgeable than others in pre-clinical but year 3 onwards, everyone's roughly on the same page. Don't fret now...enjoy your gap year. Hope my rant helps

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Original post by Hydromancer

Don't worry! Learn the appropriate topics and work hard and you'll be as good a doctor as any. I think that some people are less knowledgeable than others in pre-clinical but year 3 onwards, everyone's roughly on the same page. Don't fret now...enjoy your gap year. Hope my rant helps

Thanks so much for the insight and useful responses. I am a bit stressed about it all now though, I see incompetent doctors making mistakes on the wards sometimes and I so don't want to be one of them...

Before I let you go, can I ask if you would recommend some books that you've found particularly useful during pre-clinical years? There are some fab threads on this topic already I know, but as a Manchester medic may be you could highlight some that are particularly useful for our course?

Thanks again.

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Original post by ameelia22

Thanks so much for the insight and useful responses. I am a bit stressed about it all now though, I see incompetent doctors making mistakes on the wards sometimes and I so don't want to be one of them...

Before I let you go, can I ask if you would recommend some books that you've found particularly useful during pre-clinical years? There are some fab threads on this topic already I know, but as a Manchester medic may be you could highlight some that are particularly useful for our course?

Thanks again.

This is a very bad question to ask me as I am big on books. Personally I used Snell's Anatomy by Regions for anatomy (this is a very personal choice--Moore and Dalley is probably better overall but the detail is too over the top for me and the prose is mind numbing...no one I know has actually read the book cover to cover and I find that despite the exams you just need to learn anatomy. Grays for students is very popular), Guyton's physiology (very popular) and Robbins Pathology (popular in the States, less so here). You might need to supplement with some very basic embryology in first semester but this combination would help you do very well in semesters 2 and 4 in my opinion and even semester 1 and 3. Semester 3 will require some specialist neuro book potentially. I read loads of complicated books like many others but in hindsight, although very dry, The Nervous System by Titus was probably all I needed in one.

Don't stress out too much about this. As a medical student (particularly in clinical years), you have a lot of responsibility for your own learning so if you feel that you need experience in some particular area, go and fill the gaps in your knowledge/skills!

When you say incompetent doctors making mistakes, what exactly do you mean? As a Prof. once told me "doctors just hate following protocols" :P

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 14

Original post by Hydromancer

This is a very bad question to ask me as I am big on books. Personally I used Snell's Anatomy by Regions for anatomy (this is a very personal choice--Moore and Dalley is probably better overall but the detail is too over the top for me and the prose is mind numbing...no one I know has actually read the book cover to cover and I find that despite the exams you just need to learn anatomy. Grays for students is very popular), Guyton's physiology (very popular) and Robbins Pathology (popular in the States, less so here). You might need to supplement with some very basic embryology in first semester but this combination would help you do very well in semesters 2 and 4 in my opinion and even semester 1 and 3. Semester 3 will require some specialist neuro book potentially. I read loads of complicated books like many others but in hindsight, although very dry, The Nervous System by Titus was probably all I needed in one.

Don't stress out too much about this. As a medical student (particularly in clinical years), you have a lot of responsibility for your own learning so if you feel that you need experience in some particular area, go and fill the gaps in your knowledge/skills!

When you say incompetent doctors making mistakes, what exactly do you mean? As a Prof. once told me "doctors just hate following protocols" :P

Ah you're a babe!! Thank you so much you've saved my life. I'm so tempted to get a couple of those and start some ridiculous pre-reading :P (yes, I am sad. )

Well once we had a patient who was short of breath, COPD and all the rest of it and we called a doctor who came to the patient, and just turned the oxygen up to like 10L. I think the patient became hypo or something? Anyway, they had a datix filed against him and stuff, but I never actually saw him again :s-smilie:

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Original post by ameelia22

Ah you're a babe!! Thank you so much you've saved my life. I'm so tempted to get a couple of those and start some ridiculous pre-reading :P (yes, I am sad. )

Well once we had a patient who was short of breath, COPD and all the rest of it and we called a doctor who came to the patient, and just turned the oxygen up to like 10L. I think the patient became hypo or something? Anyway, they had a datix filed against him and stuff, but I never actually saw him again :s-smilie:

no worries! I still think you should wait for uni to start but overall, I will say that don't just buy books blindly...people have different preference when it comes to medical textbooks. Having said that, medical students usually like Guyton and doing some reproductive physiology may not be bad idea. Also anatomy is relatively easy (if boring) to learn if you are interested.

I can see were your doctor potentially went wrong, although I understand that giving 100% O2 to COPD patients is a bit of a grey area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxic_drive

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Helenia

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ameelia

Thanks so much for the insight and useful responses. I am a bit stressed about it all now though, I see incompetent doctors making mistakes on the wards sometimes and I so don't want to be one of them...

You will be.

Original post by ameelia22

Well once we had a patient who was short of breath, COPD and all the rest of it and we called a doctor who came to the patient, and just turned the oxygen up to like 10L. I think the patient became hypo or something? Anyway, they had a datix filed against him and stuff, but I never actually saw him again :s-smilie:

So you don't actually understand what went on or the pathophysiology of the condition, what the doctor did and why it may or may not have been wrong, you just know that the nurses decided he had been naughty and filled in a Datix (common form of nursey revenge on doctors if they get pissed off)? And on that basis, you've decided they're totally incompetent?

They may have done the wrong thing in that situation - they may not, but you obviously don't know and I don't either because I wasn't there. Even if they did, it doesn't mean the whole of their practice is incompetent. Be careful before making such judgements, you will be the one making scary decisions in that situation in a few years time.

Giving high flow oxygen to certain COPD patients can be dangerous. But not giving oxygen to any patient who is dying from hypoxia is even more dangerous. It's not as clear-cut as you might think.

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