In summary,...

I've started going over my old summaries - partly to do some half-hearted revision, but mostly to just tidy them up a little to make life easier for myself when I get onto hardcore revision in a couple of weeks - only to realise that some of them DON'T EXIST. That's right, they just aren't there. I'd forgotten, but every now and then throughout the semester there was a week when I just couldn't really be bothered summarising it properly. To be honest, it's only within the last few weeks that I've really gotten then hang of doing neat, tidy summaries, all nicely formatted with pretty little diagrams. Of course, it figures that the weeks that I didn't do summaries for are mostly the kind of messy weeks that I didn't particularly enjoy or were full of difficult concepts. Oh well, at least I have some form of notes for everything - it's just a matter of pulling it all together.

If there are any aspiring med students reading this, my one big tip for you when you get in is: SUMMARISE EVERYTHING! And do it as you go. In undergrad, I used to leave my summarising until swotvac, and compiling my summaries was essentially my study. It worked fine for me then, but trust me, if you try to do this in med school, there is no way you will actually get through all of the material to summarise it all. I find what works best for me (and it could be completely different for you - part of the difficulty in med school is figuring out what does work best for you) is to summarise each night - lectures, pracs, whatever it is we did that day, I try to summarise it that night, in particular reference to our week's learning objectives. The learning objectives get sent out by the school at the start of the week, and essentially involve a list of everything we're meant to learn that week. At the weekend, I can go through and see if there are any learning objectives I've missed, and fill in those. Then I try to condense it to what I really need to know, and in an easy-to-read format. I guess the exam will be the time to see whether my method worked.

The Bane of My Existence

It varies from week to week, day to day, moment to moment, but there is always at least one thing we're studying that drives me round the bend - whether it's through level of difficulty, boredom or sheer irrelevance.

In the first few weeks it was our microbiology pracs - a weekly two-hour session where we performed swabs, stains and assays as we were told, with no inkling as to why we were actually performing any of these tasks, or how what we were doing could possibly be clinically relevant.

Then it was our entire respiratory block. I apologise to all thoracic physicians, and I am aware that, no matter what specialty I go into, a vast proportion of my patients are likely to have some form of respiratory dysfunction, but to be completely honest, I find respiratory physiology and pathology SOOO BOOOORRRINNNG. Maybe it's the physics. I'm not sure, but I just can't bring myself to be interested in all that FEV-1, type II respiratory failure, blah blah blah... sorry, where was I? My mind was wandering to something more interesting, like supervising the drying of paint.

The current bane of my existence I actually find quite interesting, but am terrified that I will never actually be able to remember any of it. Oh, pharmacology, why do you tease me so?! With all of your unpronouncable names, and drugs that don't fit into the classes, and similar but not quite the same mechanisms of action! I think my main problem is that pharmacology seems to involve a hell of a lot of rote memorisation, which I find significantly more difficult than learning via the understanding of a process (thank god for physiology and pathology, the two domains that really boost my self-esteem).

Anyway, enough of my whining - I need to go and figure out the difference between clopidogrel and acetyl-salicylic acid...

"Now Say 99..."

We were assessed today on our respiratory examination technique. Big breath of relief (no pun intended) because I passed. I definitely didn't ace it, unfortunately - I practiced so much for this one in the hope of doing better than our GI exam last month, but I don't think I was particularly more fluent this time around. At least it is DONE, though. It is quite frustrating, having these assessments throughout the year, which we have to pass, but not receiving any marks for them. It takes a LOT of time to prepare for the exams, time which we could obviously spend studying for the end-of-semester written exams which do contribute to our mark (95% of our mark for the entire year, in fact). It's quite harsh having practically all of our marks in written exams, when we are actually doing other forms of assessment constantly.

Each one is a relief to pass, as if we fail we have to attent 'remedial' sessions and repeat the exam until we do pass. So far, we have been assessed on two systems, and there have been no remedial sessions for the first system yet. This means that, potentially, students will be having to learn exams for three systems over the next block (if someone has failed both GIT and resp and is re-learning both whilst also learning the cardio exam, our next block). I think this will be quite difficult to manage for people - both students and administrative staff, as cramming extra remedial classes into our already jam-packed schedule will be tough.

Elective Planning

I'm trying to plan my elective placement at the moment, and it's proving to be a bit of a pain. At the end of first year, after our end-of-year exam, we do a four-week placement. It can be practically anywhere we like (within reason - we can't go to Afghanistan, or Baghdad, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example), in any field we like, and often involves a lot of hands-on work. The whole concept is very exciting, and I'm sure it'll be the best part of first year. I'm planning on going to South-East Asia, so that I can visit some family that live in that area afterwards.

It has been proving quite difficult and extremely time-consuming, however, to organise my placement. I originally wanted to go to Cambodia, as I thought it would be fascinating to work in a country which has such an underdeveloped health system, and would give me a opportunity to actually help people. I spent hours researching health organisations and clinics there, trying to find contact details for people who could take me on. Then I wrote countless letters and emails, and, after 6 weeks, I have received only two replies. Both of these replies thanked me for my interest, but stated that their clinics were too small to be able to take students, and existed specifically to train Cambodian doctors.

I've now revised my plans, and am intending to go to Malaysia. There seems to be quite a lot of available information about doing an elective there, unlike for Cambodia, so perhaps it's easier to get a place there. There's also more likelihood that some of the patients will speak English, which might be helpful! So far I've only sent out one email, but I received a tentatively promising response today, which had me heaving a HUGE sigh of relief! Sure, this one organisation may fall through, but I have a list of about ten others in Malaysia to contact yet, and the fact that the one I did contact already responded is a promising sign.

My main whinge is that it's so time-consuming. I'll have to spend a few hours this week writing letters to people about placements, and this is all time that gets taken out of my study time. I need that time to cram as much as I can into this tiny little brain of mine.