Being a medical student

Hi all, so I wanted to ask how do medical students go about studying, their experiences from lectures how is it like?

I never attended lectures (going into 4th year) as I couldn't stand sitting there. Studies have shown that lectures only cause you to retain 10% of the knowledge, whereas engaging in the learning process (e.g. teaching it, explaining to yourself, writing it out in your own words, drawing diagrams) causes 75%+ retention

I always made my own notes (in my own words), then podcasted at 1.5x all the lectures to see if I missed anything. And it worked well for me. I also try to make my notes legible for colleagues in case they need help, so it ensures I understand the topics well.

OSCEs I'd say revising with colleagues is almost a requirement as you need to practice taking histories, which you can't really do on your own, though it's not a be all end all

Reply 2

asif007

Lectures are absolutely crucial for exam revision so I would recommend you to attend every single one, even the **** ones. You will save yourself so much headache when it comes to revising for exams. Getting a basic understanding or even half learning the topic just by attending a lecture will make your revision much easier in exam season. I recommend you to also make good notes in every lecture and that way half your work is done long before you start revising.

Edit: this applies for pre clinical years. Clinical - the same goes but for attending placements.

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 3

HGS345

It's quite subjective imo. I gained nothing from an entire year of hospital placement. Clinics and ward rounds were useless. The only time I actually learnt was from direct teaching in classes, and bedside teaching whereby it was a planned teaching session within the wards. Otherwise, you just follow the doctors around during ward rounds but they don't really have time to teach or explain anything.

As far as passing clinical year exams, Passmed and practicing for OSCEs is the way forward

Reply 4

HGS345

I think I need to clarify my point. I wasn't criticising doctors. I was just making the point that a lot of the time doctors may not have time to teach, hence, you just end up following them around but not understanding their decisions as in most cases (especially on ward rounds I've been on) they already know the patient, so they're not starting by reading patient notes etc. They just speak a few words to the rest of their team and move onto the next patient.

As far as saying you can't isolate doctors from teachers, I'd have to disagree. Doctors are asked to teach, and so they do, but that doesn't make them qualified teachers. Just because they are asked to teach doesn't mean they are capable of teaching (e.g. understanding how to help the students make the most out of the placement). I'm not saying doctors can't teach either, but there's an expectation that just because a doctor has the knowledge and experience, that they are competent at passing that knowledge on, and that isn't always the case. But I get what you're trying to say. And I specifically said I benefited from bedside teachers, not that I had bad ones.

And I don't get your last question? My student learning experience has got nothing to do with how I would treat my own students if I'm ever put in that position to teach. If anything, it would improve my teaching as I would know what to do and not to do.

Reply 5

HGS345

Well clinical teaching is something I want to go into, so I am probably going to be more critical of the teaching system than others, as I want to make improvements to it. So if I am forced into it, then it's a win-win for everyone.

Reply 6

asif007

I might be quite traditionalist in my views but I’m a firm believer that as a medical student I have a responsibility to attend everything on the timetable no matter how good or bad I think it is. When you’re a student at university and paying tuition fees, you don’t have a right to complain about how people should be teaching or doing this and that better. Unless your teaching is abusive to students or it doesn’t happen at all, you get what you pay for. I’ve seen a girl with a Biomed degree mouthing off at a 1st year Medicine lecturer about how he should be teaching medical science and she ended up resitting the whole year despite having done most of it before. Such bad attitude.

Also, when you’re being taught by clinical staff who get no extra pay for giving up their time to help you, the least you should be doing is giving them the courtesy of your attendance. As harsh as it sounds, I actually have no sympathy or respect for medical students who attend nothing but still expect to pass their exams at the end of the year. Most of them will, but I think that’s unfair and discourteous to all the other hardworking students who do make an effort to attend everything. Medicine is serious business, not any old 3 year course at DMU where you can skip lectures every day.

I know some medical schools are strict on attendance (minimum 80% needed to be eligible to sit exams) whereas others are not. I find that frustrating and I think attendance should be standardised at every medical school in the UK. How can you expect to be a doctor working 12+ hours on the ward when you can’t attend an 8 hour day of uni/placement? I too want to go into teaching, but what kind of teacher would I be if I don’t extend the courtesy of going to other peoples’ teaching? Especially colleagues and seniors. The way I see it, if I ever miss anything on the timetable, I’m letting down the rest of my group who do attend. Everyone in the group has equal responsibility to attend, which is why people who miss things regularly because they were partying the previous night or just too lazy to get out of bed, really annoy me.

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 7

Ghotay

Original post by asif007

As harsh as it sounds, I actually have no sympathy or respect for medical students who attend nothing but still expect to pass their exams at the end of the year.

I kind of agree with this bit, in that if you literally don't turn up it's a bit unreasonable to expect to do well. But other than that your whole post is just advocating for a 'work hard, not smart' mentality, which I think is dumb.

It's not a courtesy of the medical school to teach you. You are PAYING them to teach you, it should be to your benefit. Of course if you are in clinical years and it's small group teaching it is only polite to let your tutor know you won't make it, I don't think you should leave people in the lurch. And if you're not attending teaching it is useful to feedback why so hopefully it can be improved. But equally I don't think you should have to sacrifice your time and effort for teaching that is genuinely useless

And as far as it being discourteous to other students if you don't turn up. 1) What have they got to do with it 2) Smells like sour grapes

Reply 8

asif007

Original post by Ghotay

So you’re calling me dumb now? Seems a bit aggressive.

Obviously the teaching is intended for our benefit. What I don’t find acceptable is people who take it upon themselves to decide they won’t attend any more teaching with x member of staff or won’t go to x lectures because one or two sessions went badly. I think it should be a whole group responsibility to feedback if the teaching is poor, not to give one or two people the benefit of the doubt with missing things when everyone else still goes. If teaching is genuinely useless for everyone, it should be group feedback. If one person finds it useless but nobody else does, why should the one person be allowed to miss it without consequence? This is why I say attendance should be standardised everywhere.

I’ve also never worked with any staff member who would accept non-attendance because their teaching “isn’t useful” to me. Teaching is always compulsory for me - if I don’t attend for whatever reason even if I tell them in advance, I get marked absent and reported to the medical school who then come down on my back. Obviously with exceptions like illness. Just to clarify, I’m talking about small group tutorials or clinical skills teaching, not bedside teaching with a consultant/doctor. If I miss the latter, it’s a coin toss whether your doctor notices or not.

I’ve been unlucky before with a consultant. I attended every one of her teaching sessions for the whole week but on the last day I was ill and arrived late, although I had called ahead. She proceeded to insult me in front of my colleagues and failed me for the whole week because of the one morning I was late. While other people in my group who didn’t turn up all week were given a pass with no problems. My point being that if attendance is standardised everywhere, you stop people being given a free pass if they haven’t attended.

Actually, when it’s a PBL session every group member needs to be there to give input and it does matter to everyone. If one or two people don’t come, that adds to the workload of the people who do attend. Working in a team means doing your share of the work. It might seem like everyone is only there to do their own work, but I think Medicine is a collaborative process wherever you go. Especially when it comes to practising for OSCE’s.

Reply 9

HGS345

Original post by asif007

You answered your own question in the first paragraph. If someone finds it useless then of course it shouldn't be a big deal if they miss it. They're paying for it so it's their loss, but you want them to get punished on top of that? And attendance IS standardised, that's the whole point of the '80%' rule. There's a reason why some teaching sessions are not monitored, because they're not mandatory, so you shouldn't be faulting a student who doesn't go. Studies have even shown that you only retain 10% of knowledge from lecture based teaching, so even science says it's pretty futile.

I for one have missed teaching sessions that I didn't find helpful so that I could spend time revising and making use of my time where I could actually learn. I take Medicine very seriously. I spend at least 6-7 hours a day studying, 7 days a week, and spend a lot of time making resources for other colleagues to help with their studies, so your 'if you don't attend then your work ethic is poor' is an unfair and very biased way of looking at things.

And obviously no teacher is going to accept that their teaching is regarded as useless.

If it's compulsory for you then fine, hold yourself to that standard. But not everyone operates like you, so don't judge people, as some of them may be working harder than you behind the scenes.

And as far as PBL is concerned, everyone has to learn everything anyway, so it makes no difference whether people show up or not. Again, as Ghotay stated, you're following a work hard not work smart mentality.

Reply 10

Angury

Original post by asif007

1. I think as a university student you should have a right to complain if the teaching is poor. You should expect to have a teacher who understands their subject and is able to explain it in a way that is clear and understandable.

2. Just because students do not attend lectures does not mean they are not hardworking. Different people learn in different ways.

3. I do not think I would have passed my Medicine course if I had not skipped lectures.

4. What does working on a ward have to do with attending 8 hours of lectures? I did not attend any lectures in my second year. Does that make me a bad doctor?

5. Why do you feel that you are letting down the rest of the group if you do not attend the teaching? In what way do you think they will be affected by your absence?

I think different people learn in different ways. The most important thing is to study smart. If you are going to spend an hour at a lecture where you know you won't be able to concentrate and won't learn anything because you find it difficult to learn just by listening, it may make more sense to use that hour learning the material yourself. Just because you don't attend a lecture doesn't mean you're spending the time sitting around watching TV. You need to find a way of studying that works for you.

Original post by asif007

1. Why shouldn't people be able to miss lectures if they don't find it useful? They can still feedback to the medical school but unfortunately things do not change quickly. Why should they spend their time in a way that is not useful to their study?

2. I'm sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience; unfortunately many of my friends have had similar experiences in medical school. However, I do not think the answer lies in making attendance compulsory for e.g. lectures (although I do agree that some teaching should be mandatory).

Anyway, to answer OP:

Original post by W1nst0n

Hi all, so I wanted to ask how do medical students go about studying, their experiences from lectures how is it like?

Medical schools are different so you might find a variety of answers. My medical school divided the course into lectures/dissection for the first 2 years and then clinical placements & small group teaching in the final 3 years.

I found lectures 9-5 incredibly boring and unproductive. These lectures often lasted for one hour at a time, in a room filled with three hundred students where you wouldn't be able to ask a question but just had to sit there and listen.. for one hour. In my second year I stopped going to lectures, went through the curriculum myself and learnt through textbooks/powerpoint slides etc. I did much better in my second year exams as a result.

I personally did not find dissection very helpful but I think that's just me; many people in my year enjoyed dissection and anatomy was one of my weaknesses.

I enjoyed some of my clinical placements. If you have a good team and aren't in a group of 10 students (i.e. just one or two of you) then you can learn a lot and enjoy it. You kind of learn by osmosis - listen in to the ward round, watch the clinician taking the history & doing the examination, how they come to their diagnosis and how they manage the patient. Some clinicians are also very good at bedside teaching, and in general I found things stuck in my head much better if I had seen something on placement. Then in the evenings I would read through conditions I had seen that day to get a better understanding and consolidate the knowledge in my brain.

I also preferred small-group teaching to lectures. Having fewer people = more interactive and you can also ask questions if you don't understand something.

Hope some of that was helpful. :smile: