Sounds intriguing, really does.
May I put a few questions forward? My apologies for hijacking the tread.
1. Is there much lab work during the first year? For example viewing different specimens of skin disease (strange example, i know), do you use microscopes much?
2. Do you cover the history of medicine in great depth?
3. How much time is dedicated to hospital experience during the first year?
4. During the later years of your study is there anything you wish you paid more attention to, and were there times where you thought this is way too complex for me to comprehend, or too much for me to tolerate? What is it? And what would you do to better prepare for it?... can be a situation
(1) There will usually be at least two labs per week for the first two years. Close to half of them are anatomy or histology/pathology pracs (the latter are held in computer labs - we use virtual slides rather than microscopes). The actual lab pracs are generally for microbiology/biochem/molecular biology (all of which are somewhat few and far between). In microbiology you get to look at bacteria under the microscopes from things like cultures, sputum samples, etc. While we look at decent number of histopathology slides (diseases of the skin, heart, kidneys, liver, brain, etc... etc...) we do almost no microscopy outside of microbiology (and in micro they are all set up, so you never learn to be proficient).
(2) No. You pick up tidbits when you have well read lecturers, but on the whole there is minimal history of med.
(3) 2 hours fortnightly (alternating with 3 hour clinical skill / history sessions every other week where you practice skills/history on other medical students)
(4) Yes - all the basic sciences. They matter a lot. I came out of 'phase 1' (years 1 & 2) with reasonable knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology. I still need to go back and consolidate these. The course is very weak on biochemistry, pharmacology and microbiology. The lack of pharmacology in particular is problematic - as soon as you hit the wards the clinicians expect you to be on top of it.
I'm yet to come across something which I find too complex per se. Most body processes are relatively mechanical and can be understood with enough thought and a good flow chart. People sometimes have difficulty with more abstract concepts which require some understanding of physics, stats / statistical mechanics and so forth, e.g. ECG interpretation (cardiac vectors...), osmosis, equilibrium potentials.
I do, however, reach points where I think 'there is
too much to know'. I'm looking at my clinical exams coming up in a months time and the potential range of knowledge is quite scary - anything pertinent to history, examination, differential diagnoses, pathophysiology, pharmacology, other basic sciences and investigations in the context of basic internal medicine, paediatrics and O&G (also population health). It's manageable, but it's a lot. You have to be satisfied with knowing enough, but never knowing everything. Keeping in mind that it takes a fair bit of work to get to 'enough' (lifelong learning is the name of the game).
