All entries for September 2015
September 30, 2015
WMS – Days 1 and 2
Well, on Monday I started medical school! It’d be great to say we saw patients on day one, ordered our first X-rays, cured cancer… sadly instead it involved a lot of introductory lectures on welfare and what being a medical student actually entails. Hint: it’s not curing cancer. Yet.
Of course we sign up for this long journey towards becoming doctors because we want to help patients directly, but it was driven home that to do this you need to be looking after your own health and wellbeing first. It’s not just a recommendation either; today we signed our student contracts which, amongst many other things, require us to stay on top of our health and to report any problems to the medical school.
Nonetheless it was pretty cool to be sitting in the lecture theatre with my peers, all acutely aware of what we’ve got ourselves into. Tuesday we had our first couple of lectures – introductions to cells and organelles – which as a biomed student can seem a little unnecessary but it’s really important to get everyone up to scratch and to a similar level so we can contribute in groups effectively. A large part of our course is tailored around case-based learning in small groups (whom I met today J).
Tuesday evening we got to meet our medic parents for the first time, who we’ve been assured will be our Lord and Saviour’s for the next year! I’m pretty excited about spending time with the second years who take up a lot of their time with contributing to our teaching, which is quite a neat aspect of Warwick’s course. It’ll be great to have their input on how we can focus our learning effectively.
I’ll try and write up again after the next few days, after which we’ll have had the medics Fresher’s Fair and the (dreaded? notorious?) Doctors & Nurses night (pictures almost certainly guaranteed!)
Megan Earle
30 Sep 2015 08:11
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Tags: Matt Mbchb Student Warwick Wms
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September 21, 2015
Meet Matt!
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Hi! I’m Matt, and in a couple of weeks I’ll be a first year student at Warwick Medical School! Typing that sentence still feels a bit bizarre as it’s something I’ve wanted to say for quite some time. This was my third application to Warwick and I’m grateful they’ve finally succumbed to persistence and hard work (apparently that’s a desired trait for medical students…) I’ve literally just settled down in my new house with four other medics, and I’ll try to blog about the build-up to Fresher’s week, the event in itself, and hopefully life as a first year medical student if I’m not completely drowning in work! |
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I previously studied at the University of Salford, an ex-polytechnic university in Manchester. If you’ve ever had the ‘privilege’ of visiting Salford then you’ll know that’s not particularly interesting in itself, but it does highlight that Warwick are happy to take people from any background so long as they meet the criteria to become good medical students and eventually good doctors.
After Salford I worked at a hospital in Manchester as a research assistant where I got the chance to become involved in global health and epidemiology. That’s something I’m quite passionate about, so I was happy to hear about WMS being part of the Medsin network and it’s definitely a society I’ll try and pursue.
For now, I’m just trying to make the most of my last ever free time (kidding, I hope), find my bearings locally and figure out exactly how self-destructive Fresher’s will be (MedSoc are yet to release their devious plans for 2015). I’ll keep you informed as and when I can :)
Megan Earle
21 Sep 2015 09:42
| Tags: Fresher Matt Mbchb Student Warwick Wms
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September 10, 2015
Ready, set, CV!
Next week I will be entering the Medical School as a fully-fledged second year medical student. After a very long summer holiday I’m feeling a little apprehensive about going back, will I remember anything from last year? Will I remember the different sections when taking a history and can I still use my stethoscope? At the same time I’m feeling very excited to enter the next stage of my medical training, I’m looking forward to going back onto the wards and I’m really looking forward to starting our GP placements.
Among all this clinical experience I still have regular lectures until Christmas so I’m also looking forward to covering topics from last year in more detail and also learning topics that were deemed too complicated for last year – well actually, I’m a bit more nervous about that last one!
As this will have been most students' last long summer holiday, people have tried to make the most of it. I got the chance to conduct a research project over the summer after receiving a bursary from the Undergraduate Research Support Scheme at Warwick. My project has been to conduct a systematic review looking at the longitudinal relationship between short sleep duration and obesity in children and adolescents.
I’ve learnt lots of new skills that are used a lot in clinical research such as how to construct and conduct selective searches in a variety of scientific databases and have also become much more able to critically appraise scientific papers which again is a useful skill to have in medicine. I’m quite interested in combining research with clinical work in the future so using my last long summer to do a project like this has been really beneficial to me and will be a good addition to my CV. While I may only be entering my second year, medicine moves fast and the CV building doesn’t stop when you get into medical school.
Having attended the Royal College of Psychiatrists conference at the start of the summer and hearing about all the work the society is doing to boost recruitment to this specialty by supporting medical students and student societies, I decided to get more involved in the Warwick Psychiatry Society.
There are a wide variety of societies in the medical school and most specialties are represented. Getting involved in a student society is also a great addition to your CV and can help show interest in preparation for future job applications so it’s worth thinking about how you can best use your time in Medical School. The PsychSoc is relatively new and small and when I asked if they needed any help this year I didn’t expect to be asked to be treasurer! Despite having no experience of this at all I decided to give it a go and with help from the president and vice president we now have an official society bank account and successfully applied for funding from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is a big boost to the PsychSoc and I’m really looking forward to helping the society expand over the coming year. Make sure to look out for us in induction week to get some freebies!
I’m also looking forward to becoming a parent… a Medic parent that is! Having benefited a lot from the wisdom of my Medic Dad during my first year I’m looking forward to doing the same for another unsuspecting student in a few weeks’ time!
Megan Earle
10 Sep 2015 08:18
| Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms
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