Joining Medicine, NEED help!
I will join medicine in September 2026 - really excited.
I have 6 questions below, if any fellow medical student could help out with
1. What are the types of jobs that should try to get that are med student "friendly" to support myself financially alongside heavy academics? I've heard some universities give out a few jobs too?
2. What actually happens during medicine offer holder days?
3. Do you recommend getting a laptop (eg MacBook) or Apple iPad? Why?
4. For A-Levels I used the specification to revise for my subjects, is there such a thing for medicine?
5. What are the best resources to revise for medicine?
6. What is something you wish new medical students should know before joining?
Reply 1
Offer holder days, you go to the campus, have a tour of the place and it's teaching spaces etc. Meet course leaders, meet current students get a feel around the place. That sort of thing.
On your course will your be given stated learning goals for every piece of scheduled academic activity. This is the real yardstick. There is no single textbook or resource, I can help you with likely useful sources and resources though.
Tablet and stylus wins every time, because you can hand annotate lecture notes during the lecture rather than trying to type.
The University/student union will have a list of jobs students can do to earn money or you can just ask around locally. Some people take up HCA work in the nearest hospital. Others do hospitality work and the like. A portion of medical students, being very gifted academically, tutor younger students through A level or for medicine interviews/UCAT etc
Lots more detail on my thread above. I also need to update it for the clinical years.
Reply 2
Offer holder days, you go to the campus, have a tour of the place and it's teaching spaces etc. Meet course leaders, meet current students get a feel around the place. That sort of thing.
On your course will your be given stated learning goals for every piece of scheduled academic activity. This is the real yardstick. There is no single textbook or resource, I can help you with likely useful sources and resources though.
Tablet and stylus wins every time, because you can hand annotate lecture notes during the lecture rather than trying to type.
The University/student union will have a list of jobs students can do to earn money or you can just ask around locally. Some people take up HCA work in the nearest hospital. Others do hospitality work and the like. A portion of medical students, being very gifted academically, tutor younger students through A level or for medicine interviews/UCAT etc
Lots more detail on my thread above. I also need to update it for the clinical years.
Thank you! Yes I’ll check out the thread
Reply 3
I will join medicine in September 2026 - really excited.
I have 6 questions below, if any fellow medical student could help out with
1. What are the types of jobs that should try to get that are med student "friendly" to support myself financially alongside heavy academics? I've heard some universities give out a few jobs too?
2. What actually happens during medicine offer holder days?
3. Do you recommend getting a laptop (eg MacBook) or Apple iPad? Why?
4. For A-Levels I used the specification to revise for my subjects, is there such a thing for medicine?
5. What are the best resources to revise for medicine?
6. What is something you wish new medical students should know before joining?
Congrats on your offer!! I'm a third year medic so I'll try my best to answer your questions
1.
Types of jobs: I've worked as an online Tutor with agencies and have various zero hour contracts in hospitality and retail. Student ambassador roles are typically great because you can get lots of hours done in one go. You can also reach out to local care homes and your hospital trust to see if they hire bank HCAs.
2.
At our offer holder days in Lancaster- you'll be given a tour of the med school and the wider campus, more information on the course and taster sessions for PBL/anatomy/clinical skills.... plus free food and freebies!!
3.
If you have to choose one I'd say go for the iPad with a keyboard attachment as its more portable for wards.
4.
This depends widely between med schools but NICE guidelines + BNF (for medications) + UKMLA roadmap is what I typically focus on. At Lancaster there's no specification but we are given learning objectives to work towards.
5.
Preclinical- Ninja Nerd, Osmosis , upper year notes(!!!). Clinical- Zerotofinals, Pulsenotes, PassMed textbook and question bank, Spranki deck.
6.
Research the different support options your institute offers- financial, mental health and wellbeing.
Hope this helps! If you have anymore questions feel free to fire away
Jade Third Year MBChB
Student Ambassador
Reply 4
I will join medicine in September 2026 - really excited.
I have 6 questions below, if any fellow medical student could help out with
1. What are the types of jobs that should try to get that are med student "friendly" to support myself financially alongside heavy academics? I've heard some universities give out a few jobs too?
2. What actually happens during medicine offer holder days?
3. Do you recommend getting a laptop (eg MacBook) or Apple iPad? Why?
4. For A-Levels I used the specification to revise for my subjects, is there such a thing for medicine?
5. What are the best resources to revise for medicine?
6. What is something you wish new medical students should know before joining?
Hi
A massive congratulations on getting an offer to study medicine. I am also a 3rd year medic at Southampton and would love to give you some advice.
1.
In terms of jobs, tutoring is always a good option and is more flexible. One thing I would add, is check if the university is recruiting student ambassadors. They offer a lot of flexible roles and longer hours particularly when hosting big events like open days.
2.
Similarly at our offer holder day in Southampton, you will get a tour of campus and the opportunity to meet some of the faculty members and current students, who will be able to provide more information on the course and answer any questions you may have.
3.
In terms of laptops and ipads, I prefer to use my laptap as I find it easier to use and everything is on there. Saying that, I did use my iPad alot more during first and second year to annotate diagrams for anatomy and lecture slides. You could always get the iPad with the keyboard, or alternatively get a 2 in 1 laptop/tablet. Also some universities don't let you take iPads on to the wards during placements, so this is something to be aware of.
4.
There's not so much a specification, but each lecture will have learning outcomes, which can be used as a guide to focus your learning and revision. The UKMLA map is a guide which most students follow. Each medical school is different, so its important to check with the faculty.
5.
Some of the best resources for the first 2 years are older year anki decks (use these if you can get hold of some), Aclands Anatomy Atlas, Ninja Nerd & Speed Pharmacology (on Youtube). In terms of revision, I found group revision to be the best method as you can learn so much from others. Also your questionbanks like passmed, quesmed, geeky medics (for OSCE's), zero to finals are very good and commonly used.
6.
Make sure you have hobbies and interests outside of medicine. It's very easy for medicine to quickly take over. Make sure you give time to yourself to reduce burnout. Do things you enjoy - there's plenty of time outside of medicine if you manage your time right. Little and often is the best way to work and revise. Leaving everything last minute can become very overbearing as there is a lot of content.
Khadija (Student Ambassador)
Reply 5
A massive congratulations on getting an offer to study medicine. I am also a 3rd year medic at Southampton and would love to give you some advice.
1.
In terms of jobs, tutoring is always a good option and is more flexible. One thing I would add, is check if the university is recruiting student ambassadors. They offer a lot of flexible roles and longer hours particularly when hosting big events like open days.
2.
Similarly at our offer holder day in Southampton, you will get a tour of campus and the opportunity to meet some of the faculty members and current students, who will be able to provide more information on the course and answer any questions you may have.
3.
In terms of laptops and ipads, I prefer to use my laptap as I find it easier to use and everything is on there. Saying that, I did use my iPad alot more during first and second year to annotate diagrams for anatomy and lecture slides. You could always get the iPad with the keyboard, or alternatively get a 2 in 1 laptop/tablet. Also some universities don't let you take iPads on to the wards during placements, so this is something to be aware of.
4.
There's not so much a specification, but each lecture will have learning outcomes, which can be used as a guide to focus your learning and revision. The UKMLA map is a guide which most students follow. Each medical school is different, so its important to check with the faculty.
5.
Some of the best resources for the first 2 years are older year anki decks (use these if you can get hold of some), Aclands Anatomy Atlas, Ninja Nerd & Speed Pharmacology (on Youtube). In terms of revision, I found group revision to be the best method as you can learn so much from others. Also your questionbanks like passmed, quesmed, geeky medics (for OSCE's), zero to finals are very good and commonly used.
6.
Make sure you have hobbies and interests outside of medicine. It's very easy for medicine to quickly take over. Make sure you give time to yourself to reduce burnout. Do things you enjoy - there's plenty of time outside of medicine if you manage your time right. Little and often is the best way to work and revise. Leaving everything last minute can become very overbearing as there is a lot of content.
Khadija (Student Ambassador)
Thank youuuu
Reply 6
Congrats on your offer!! I'm a third year medic so I'll try my best to answer your questions
1.
Types of jobs: I've worked as an online Tutor with agencies and have various zero hour contracts in hospitality and retail. Student ambassador roles are typically great because you can get lots of hours done in one go. You can also reach out to local care homes and your hospital trust to see if they hire bank HCAs.
2.
At our offer holder days in Lancaster- you'll be given a tour of the med school and the wider campus, more information on the course and taster sessions for PBL/anatomy/clinical skills.... plus free food and freebies!!
3.
If you have to choose one I'd say go for the iPad with a keyboard attachment as its more portable for wards.
4.
This depends widely between med schools but NICE guidelines + BNF (for medications) + UKMLA roadmap is what I typically focus on. At Lancaster there's no specification but we are given learning objectives to work towards.
5.
Preclinical- Ninja Nerd, Osmosis , upper year notes(!!!). Clinical- Zerotofinals, Pulsenotes, PassMed textbook and question bank, Spranki deck.
6.
Research the different support options your institute offers- financial, mental health and wellbeing.
Hope this helps! If you have anymore questions feel free to fire away
Jade Third Year MBChB
Student Ambassador
Thank you for the help!!
Reply 7
You shouldn't ever need to take down specific patient details as a medical student. That is very different to how you might approach it as a doctor in clinical practice of course, but for your purposes names, dates of birth and the like such as NHS numbers are all meaningless information that happen to represent a data governance issue. Don't ever photograph or write such material down. The only exception is where you are actually writing ward note entries where it's of course essential.
Osmosis is expensive from memory but they had good diagrams. Ninja Nerd I never used although for the odd concept you can't quite work out youtube can offer some very good information to help pin down something you didn't understand in a lecture. There will be times you can't fully understand something in a lecture don't sweat it. Just try to keep up, write notes and move on; they move at a pace and you can filter the information later at leisure.
The clinical content is where people can fall down somewhat. The first problem is having access to too many sources. Passmedicine, Zero to finals, etc etc. Try to stick with one source and use it. In the main they all present much the same information anyway, try not to get overloaded by everything.
Balance your time in the clinical environment with time you need to spend studying. You can spend a lot of time on the wards but in reality achieve not a lot in the medium term. If you feel you need to practice a particular skill, practice that skill until you have the crux of it at a level you could perform it in an OSCE style environment. You won't have time to do endless days performing the full list of jobs that an experienced HCA could do in a blink. You're not there to try to replicate that level of aptitude, you just need to know how to do a job to an acceptable standard, not to develop all the skills to the point you could easily first-try cannulate an 84 year old whose has collapsed in the street due an aortic dissection. That level of aptitude will come but that is a long way into the future. Truth be told a lot of the clinical skills evaporate over time when you don't use them anyway. The knowledge of how to procedurally do them might remain but the muscle memory and skill level won't. Don't be disheartened if you see the ease at which nurses can do X and Y. Some of them are hugely skilled and experienced at these tasks- I've worked with nurses, often from Asia, who are were airway trained out of the gate and capable of ACLS and leave nursing school able to cannulate and catheterise. But that's not what you're training for. You are being trained to think and you're being trained for the purposes of leadership; whilst you might find procedural skills immensely satisfying, medicine has a focus beyond a lot more than that.
I dislike guidelines in the main, especially anything where it involves basically arbitrary age cut-offs or other patient factors. I feel like you can clinically slip within guidelines your entire career but it's not that satisfying and it feel like flow chart-medicine and it can blind you from using your own clinical gestalt and gut-feel which are powerful tools when wielded with a degree of experience.
I actually dislike passmedicine, too. You can pass exams with it, absolutely, but it drains your soul doing it and having the ability to remember random factoids I find just distracts from the grass-roots level understanding of physiology that makes it possible to actually logically work out the answers to questions rather than rote-memorise material. Also, cramming the stuff in the last 8 weeks is useful for many but it will walk out of your head at the same speed as you leave the exam room. You're trying to store this content for future use. This is where that 4-5 years of solid Anki-time investment pays bigly because you've got the content freeze-branded into your cerebrum, it's not not merely a bag of stored liquid neurotransmitters you'll wash out the second you hit the pub for the post-exam shake-down.
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