Pros and cons of your med school?
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Done, but vague.
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Thanls
Pros:
•
Really friendly, social medical school - each year group has around 300 students so you're always meeting somebody new.
•
Students come from a very wide range of backgrounds - don't know if this is common with other med schools, but there's a big mix of people from non-science backgrounds who did foundation courses, science graduates and undergraduates.
•
Good curriculum structure - the year is split up into "system blocks". Foundation (basic physiology/biochemistry etc), Endocrine, Musculoskeletal, Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Gastrointestinal, Urogenital and Neurosensory. Each system block has accompanying Clinical Skills and Anatomy sessions.
•
Extensive use of the Human Anatomy Resource Centre - for each system we get 1-2 two hour sessions looking at prosections of human cadavers and teaching from HARC staff. Weak knowledge of anatomy was a problem for students of the old curriculum I believe, so this is definitely a positive.
•
CBL is excellent to fill in the blanks of your learning. This is a two hour session, directed by two facilitators (usually consultants in their field at local hospitals) discussing the underlying pathophysiology of illnesses related to the system and how this links in to our preclinical, science-based learning in year 1.
•
As this new curriculum was only implemented just over a year ago, there are still many problems in regards to the administration of the medical school. For example, each system comes with a formative "end of system block test" which can have irrelevant questions or glitches. There are others but as it's past my bed time I can't think of them...
•
Compulsory 9am lectures... EVERY SINGLE DAY. They have a newly implemented attendance system which involves the use of portable scanners, which scan our student ID cards to register attendance. These are done on a "spot check" basis. If someone forgets or loses their student ID, the medical school refuse to register their attendance through other means (such as signing an attendance sheet). These portable scanners are also used for small group sessions such as Clinical Skills and HARC. The latter two involve sign in sheets as well, so it's not as much of a problem - but many of us have received angry emails from the medical school about lecture attendance.
•
The medical school society is extremely active and social - they host events based on hundreds of years of traditions, such as the Annual Dinner, weekly Thursday Ordinary Meetings and various balls. They also have many medical student sports teams. This is both a pro and a con - my best friends have been made through events held by the med school society, and I attend some socials - however they definitely have a "lad" drinking culture about them, where a lot of it is centred around debauchery. This makes the med school seem extremely cliquey in my opinion, and as a result I haven't met as many students of other courses than I would have liked to.
Pros:
•
Really friendly, social medical school - each year group has around 300 students so you're always meeting somebody new.
•
Students come from a very wide range of backgrounds - don't know if this is common with other med schools, but there's a big mix of people from non-science backgrounds who did foundation courses, science graduates and undergraduates.
•
Good curriculum structure - the year is split up into "system blocks". Foundation (basic physiology/biochemistry etc), Endocrine, Musculoskeletal, Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Gastrointestinal, Urogenital and Neurosensory. Each system block has accompanying Clinical Skills and Anatomy sessions.
•
Extensive use of the Human Anatomy Resource Centre - for each system we get 1-2 two hour sessions looking at prosections of human cadavers and teaching from HARC staff. Weak knowledge of anatomy was a problem for students of the old curriculum I believe, so this is definitely a positive.
•
CBL is excellent to fill in the blanks of your learning. This is a two hour session, directed by two facilitators (usually consultants in their field at local hospitals) discussing the underlying pathophysiology of illnesses related to the system and how this links in to our preclinical, science-based learning in year 1.
•
As this new curriculum was only implemented just over a year ago, there are still many problems in regards to the administration of the medical school. For example, each system comes with a formative "end of system block test" which can have irrelevant questions or glitches. There are others but as it's past my bed time I can't think of them...
•
Compulsory 9am lectures... EVERY SINGLE DAY. They have a newly implemented attendance system which involves the use of portable scanners, which scan our student ID cards to register attendance. These are done on a "spot check" basis. If someone forgets or loses their student ID, the medical school refuse to register their attendance through other means (such as signing an attendance sheet). These portable scanners are also used for small group sessions such as Clinical Skills and HARC. The latter two involve sign in sheets as well, so it's not as much of a problem - but many of us have received angry emails from the medical school about lecture attendance.
•
The medical school society is extremely active and social - they host events based on hundreds of years of traditions, such as the Annual Dinner, weekly Thursday Ordinary Meetings and various balls. They also have many medical student sports teams. This is both a pro and a con - my best friends have been made through events held by the med school society, and I attend some socials - however they definitely have a "lad" drinking culture about them, where a lot of it is centred around debauchery. This makes the med school seem extremely cliquey in my opinion, and as a result I haven't met as many students of other courses than I would have liked to.
Thanks! Really interesting to hear them talking frankly about the problems with using PBL to deliver most of the core learning.
Pros:
•
Really friendly, social medical school - each year group has around 300 students so you're always meeting somebody new.
•
Students come from a very wide range of backgrounds - don't know if this is common with other med schools, but there's a big mix of people from non-science backgrounds who did foundation courses, science graduates and undergraduates.
•
Good curriculum structure - the year is split up into "system blocks". Foundation (basic physiology/biochemistry etc), Endocrine, Musculoskeletal, Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Gastrointestinal, Urogenital and Neurosensory. Each system block has accompanying Clinical Skills and Anatomy sessions.
•
Extensive use of the Human Anatomy Resource Centre - for each system we get 1-2 two hour sessions looking at prosections of human cadavers and teaching from HARC staff. Weak knowledge of anatomy was a problem for students of the old curriculum I believe, so this is definitely a positive.
•
CBL is excellent to fill in the blanks of your learning. This is a two hour session, directed by two facilitators (usually consultants in their field at local hospitals) discussing the underlying pathophysiology of illnesses related to the system and how this links in to our preclinical, science-based learning in year 1.
•
As this new curriculum was only implemented just over a year ago, there are still many problems in regards to the administration of the medical school. For example, each system comes with a formative "end of system block test" which can have irrelevant questions or glitches. There are others but as it's past my bed time I can't think of them...
•
Compulsory 9am lectures... EVERY SINGLE DAY. They have a newly implemented attendance system which involves the use of portable scanners, which scan our student ID cards to register attendance. These are done on a "spot check" basis. If someone forgets or loses their student ID, the medical school refuse to register their attendance through other means (such as signing an attendance sheet). These portable scanners are also used for small group sessions such as Clinical Skills and HARC. The latter two involve sign in sheets as well, so it's not as much of a problem - but many of us have received angry emails from the medical school about lecture attendance.
•
The medical school society is extremely active and social - they host events based on hundreds of years of traditions, such as the Annual Dinner, weekly Thursday Ordinary Meetings and various balls. They also have many medical student sports teams. This is both a pro and a con - my best friends have been made through events held by the med school society, and I attend some socials - however they definitely have a "lad" drinking culture about them, where a lot of it is centred around debauchery. This makes the med school seem extremely cliquey in my opinion, and as a result I haven't met as many students of other courses than I would have liked to.
Thanks! I've been considering applying to Liverpool for 2017 entry so I was just wondering - is it mostly lectures or a balance between the CBL sessions and lectures?
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In first year, it's mostly lectures - we have those every day, and they are supplemented by one 2-hour CBL session and one or two HARCs and Clinical Skills per system.
In addition to this we have a few Psychology/Sociology, public health and critical analysis group discussions per term, and we also have Communication for Clinical Practice which is about 8-10 sessions per year I believe.
In addition to this we have a few Psychology/Sociology, public health and critical analysis group discussions per term, and we also have Communication for Clinical Practice which is about 8-10 sessions per year I believe.
Thanks for telling me, the website isn't clear at all and I was actually under the impression Liverpool was doing PBL until a med student came to my college and said otherwise.
The thing is, I want to do mostly PBL/CBL supplemented by lectures, not the other way round.
I really appreciate you telling me.
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The thing is, I want to do mostly PBL/CBL supplemented by lectures, not the other way round.
I really appreciate you telling me.
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No problem!
It's worth noting that at the beginning of each system block, we are given an online CBL booklet containing 2-3 cases related to the system. Each case has around 4-5 questions. You're supposed to work through these as you go through the system block and the 2 hour session is timetabled at the end of each system, where the facilitators discuss the cases in detail. So you use the lectures etc to answer the CBL questions given.
The reason they scrapped PBL is because the university got a high number of complaints from the students - they felt like they were paying £9000 a year to essentially teach themselves the course. Having compulsory lectures and group teaching now, which wasn't on the old course, definitely helps a great deal.
It's worth noting that at the beginning of each system block, we are given an online CBL booklet containing 2-3 cases related to the system. Each case has around 4-5 questions. You're supposed to work through these as you go through the system block and the 2 hour session is timetabled at the end of each system, where the facilitators discuss the cases in detail. So you use the lectures etc to answer the CBL questions given.
The reason they scrapped PBL is because the university got a high number of complaints from the students - they felt like they were paying £9000 a year to essentially teach themselves the course. Having compulsory lectures and group teaching now, which wasn't on the old course, definitely helps a great deal.
Ohh, so it's not just sitting there and taking notes, there's an element of CBL to it? How many hours of lectures a week would you say you get?
That is actually a really good point, and this is probably a really stupid question but would you say you are enjoying yourself there with the style of the course they're doing?
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That is actually a really good point, and this is probably a really stupid question but would you say you are enjoying yourself there with the style of the course they're doing?
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Yes. Timetable changes every week, so it varies from approximately 7 ~ 13 hours. Rest of timetable is filled with the group sessions I mentioned above.
I am
There's still a big focus on self-directed learning though. Each lecture comes with a list of learning objectives and directed reading, and it's the choice of the student to decide how much detail they want to go into with their learning.Is there any current medical students from Glasgow, Dundee or Aberdeen willing to give up-to-day pros and cons for their medical school?
Thanks
.London and inter london med school banter
Rotations can mean you get a pleasant surprise of a 1 day week and can pretend to be doing an arts course. This comes back to bite you in the arse when you get the full 9-6 week a few weeks later though.
Old Personal tutor not giving a **** and leaving me to my own devices
If you want to go out, someone will be every night
Dissection if that is your thing, I prefer prosection personally so wander of to the prosections leaving other people to fight over who gets to cut the heart out.
Reynolds
Cons:
New personal tutor does give a **** and made me sit though a 1.5 hour session on how to learn.
PBHell followed by PBHell exam that test totally different skills to that PBHell was trying to harness (most likely reason I will fail)
Random scanning into lectures- ******* annoying
Medical school insulates itself almost totally from other courses. Pisses me off I actually like IC people and so as a result have been called, 'not a real medic' this sort of insular attitude and arrogance means that most of the rest of the uni would quite like to see us burst into flames.
Placements that end up being miles out in 1st year. I dodged the bullet thankfully.
Blackboard the most useless system designed
eportfolio
Looking at that why am I still here....
If you want to go out, someone will be every night - what does this mean ?
what do you mean by reynolds lol ?
also what's the difference between prosection and dissection?
I find the whole "isolating med" people scary, as I'd really like to mix with other students :/ esp arts and engineering
the lecture scanning thing - does this mean you have to sign in to every lecture and they know if you don't turn up?
From reading other comments, it seems that organisation is a problem at other unis. This isn't the case at Imperial, everything is conveyed clearly by email, or is on the Intranet.Cons:I don't if this is with all unis or just with Imperial, but they seem to leave you to your own thing, there is no one pushing you to work and no one is there to catch you if you are falling behind on work. They'll just let you fail. The personal tutor are always busy and are merely a formality. Though of course I don't have knowledge about all personal tutors.The quality of tutors in tutorials varies and some are distinctly less interested and seem to see it as a formality rather than teaching with any real enthusiasm. With some tutorials finishing in 20 minutes.Blackboard is ****.
? lol what do you mean by blackboard is ****? • Integrated teaching – for me, this is the biggest plus of the UEA course. All of our learning is totally integrated, meaning that we're meeting patients and learning clinical skills from week one of year one. We go to a GP surgery one day a week throughout the course, with a GP tutor who has the whole day dedicated to us, where we put our learning into practice and meet patients. At my point of the course – fourth year - we're often sitting in the actual GP and nurse clinics and leading the whole consultation and examinations, checking our findings and plans with the GP supervising us. We also spend three months each year on hospital placements, where we're on the wards, in clinics/theatre, or having clinical teaching. Obviously this kind of learning isn't for everyone, you might find it too intense right at the beginning of the course, but for me I think this is the best way to learn to become a doctor. It's amazing how quickly you develop confidence and good communication skills learning this way, and I think it makes the stuff you learn in lectures relevant and interesting, and makes you a better doctor imo. The GMC recently did a big survey of all foundation doctors, and UEA graduates had the highest percentage of doctors saying they were well-prepared for work as a doctor than any other UK medical school, so they must be doing something right!
• Systems-based learning – so our course is split up into systems-based modules, for example in second year the three modules are cardiology, respiratory and haem/derm. Each module consists of eight weeks of campus-based teaching and four weeks of secondary care. The eight weeks of campus teaching split the module into eight chunks, for example in cardiology there is a week on arrhythmias and collapse, a week on acute coronary syndrome, a week on hypertension. One week doesn't sound like loads of time, but the week is structured so we can maximise the time the best – we meet in our PBL groups to discuss what we need to learn and go over last week’s teaching, we have three days of lectures and seminars, and then we go to GP where we meet patients with those conditions and learn the relevant clinical skills, then we consolidate our knowledge in our PBL groups again with discussion and presentations. There's so much opportunity to flag up if you're unsure about something, and it works to really reinforce your knowledge. Then after eight weeks of this we spend four weeks in hospital, which I talked about above. This again helps us reinforce our knowledge in that specialty and learn more specialist clinical skills, like suturing.
• Small-group teaching – so much of our learning is in small groups, which means that there's so much opportunity to ask questions and get help if there's anything you're stuck on. There's a three hour PBL session each week in PBL groups of ten, there's a whole day at GP each week in the same PBL groups, in secondary care we’re in small teaching groups, most of our campus-based seminar teaching is in groups of about 40 so it's not so daunting to put your hand up and ask something
• Feedback – UEA are really good with feedback and they're always open to doing their best to change the course if there's something we don't agree with, which is fantastic. For example, when I was in first year our anatomy teaching wasn't great – although all of us could do full body dissections, the teaching was very didactic and hard to engage with. So we fed this back to the medical school, and now the teaching is amazing, there's surgeons and radiologists who join in the teaching, it's more enthusiastic, there's extra workshops, there's tons of models and books for people who struggle to get stuff out of the dissection. Also when I was in first year we had parallel seminars in our first module – when two or three seminars were going on at the same time and we had to choose which to attend. Again we fed this back, and the course director worked really hard to work the timetable so now the current first years don't even know what a parallel seminar is
• Student Support - there's loads of support available within the med school, there's a whole team of really good advisors who help students who are maybe struggling academically, or having physical or mental health troubles. They're specific to med so they understand the pressures we're under, and they're really good at providing support and helping to take off pressure off
• Com skills – we get loads of consultation skills teaching, with actors in small groups, so we can develop our skills and practise in a safe space. For example, I recently had a session on breaking bad news, which is great to practise with an actor, and a session on paediatric triadic consultations with children from a local school.
• Anatomy – all students get to do full-body dissection in small groups throughout the course, alongside anatomy seminars, radiology teaching etc, which is really useful. I think they're now starting to integrate some ultrasound teaching into the anatomy labs in the lower years too
• Transport – throughout the course we get transport provided to all placements outside of Norwich, which includes the vast majority of GP placements and three of the four teaching hospitals (the fourth is literally next to the uni), which is so handy and I understand is quite unusual
• UEA and Norwich – I think UEA is a fantastic uni in general. It's friendly and sociable, and has loads of green space (massive lake and woods). There's always stuff going on – last year we had Radio 1’s Big Weekend with Muse, Foos, Swifty, Snoop Dogg, Imagine Dragons etc, and we had the second Avengers film filmed here the year before, with RDJ, Samuel L Jackson, Scarlett Johanssen etc on campus. Norwich is such a lovely city, it has a bustling centre with great shopping, but it's still a medieval city with cool winding little streets, a gorgeous river, loads of quirky shops and great pubs. Plus it's in the sunniest county in the UK so what's not to love!
Things that might not be for you (it's hard to call them ‘cons’ as for me these actually suit me and my learning really well, but maybe not for everyone)
• Because there's no preclinical/clinical divide, some people feel that they could use more grounding in the basic sciences at the start of the course. For me this has never really been an issue, as pure science isn't really what interests me – I can only really find things interesting so far as I can see them applied – but I know some people who have been frustrated by this. Having said that, there is always the support out there if you had any questions or wanted some guidance on what basic science would be helpful to cover, and we do have lots of lectures on the core sciences, they're just more spread through the year
• Small group learning might not be for everyone. I am on my fourth PBL group and never had so much as an argument in a single one of them, and for most people this is the case. However if there was a real personality clash, you'd have to learn how to work with that, as you have PBL every week and spend your whole GP day plus com skills with the group. I do know a few people who have had to work around this, but tbh when you're working in a team as a doctor, if you don't get on with someone you still have to learn to work with them, and PBL definitely teaches you to work in a team. Learning to learn in a team, helping each other whilst not letting your learning be dependent on others, is a tricky skill that takes a while to get used to
• Module 1 length – the first half of first year is a module that aims to introduce you to the way the course works, by having a module that goes over the “human lifecycle” from birth to death. This allows you to learn some basic science, get to grips with how PBL and placement works, and generally ease you into life as a med student. This is a fantastic idea. BUT it lasts half of the year (in year one there's only two modules: this and ortho/rheum) which in most people's opinions is way too long. By the end of it you'll be itching to get stuck into some proper medicine. Module 1 is far better than it was when I took it, as I said above there are no more parallel seminars, but it would be great if this module was a bit shorter
I hope that's useful if anybody reading is considering UEA, and like I said feel free to ask if there's any more you'd like to know
)I do think we get a good amount of patient experience and teaching on communication skills though.
What do you think is the biggest drawbacks of your med school? And what do you think works particularly well?
*just out of curiousity
*Aberdeen 1 Aberdeen 2
Barts 1 Barts 2 Barts 3
Birmingham 1 Birmingham 2
BSMS
Cambridge 1 Cambridge 2 Cambridge 3
Cardiff 1 Cardiff 2
East Anglia
Glasgow 1 Glasgow 2
Imperial 1 Imperial 2
Keele
Kings 1 Kings 2
Leicester
Liverpool
Manchester 1 Manchester 2 Manchester 3 Manchester 4 Manchester 5
Newcastle
Nottingham
Oxford
Peninsula 1 Peninsula 2 Peninsula 3 Peninsula 4 Peninsula 5 Peninsula 6
Sheffield
Southampton 1 Southampton 2
St Andrews 1 St Andrews 2 St Andrews 3
St Georges
UCL 1 UCL 2 UCL 3 UCL 4
Warwick
Hi, I was wondering if you would mind possibly adding my UEA entry above to the original post please? Thank you!
hey great post
I'm a 2nd year but i don't think we get much cons skills teaching. We get 1 session per semester and not everyone in the PBL gets to have a go.
Anatomy has definitely improved but many colleagues in my year as well as I think radiology teaching has been delivered poorly and is quite rushed too. I only used the ultrasound machine once in first year.
Thank God parallel seminars are gone, they were a nightmare in module 1.
Everything else i agree with
I'm a 2nd year but i don't think we get much cons skills teaching. We get 1 session per semester and not everyone in the PBL gets to have a go.
Anatomy has definitely improved but many colleagues in my year as well as I think radiology teaching has been delivered poorly and is quite rushed too. I only used the ultrasound machine once in first year.
Thank God parallel seminars are gone, they were a nightmare in module 1.
Everything else i agree with
Hey, thanks I'm glad you agree with my post
That's a good point re com skills, in fourth year we have three or four per semester, because we're doing the really specific things like breaking bad news and risk assessments, so I'd forgotten we get less earlier on. We do get to practise every week at placement, if anyone's reading and worried by that though 
Does anyone know about Leeds? I can't see a post about it...
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Does anyone know about Leeds? I can't see a post about it...
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If you go back about 10-15 pages, I wrote a post about it in 2012. But my views have changed drastically since then so I will offer nothing on my current opinions.
Ah okay thank you
Oh, did something happen? Hope you're okay! Posted from TSR Mobile
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