All 4 entries tagged Exams

One last push…

It is now 10 day to go until exams, lectures are finished and we have one week of dedicated revision time before our first year summative exams. Despite the exams hanging over Block 5 like a dark and very scary cloud, our reproduction and child health block has actually being one of my favourites.

Block 5 mostly focused on normal anatomy and physiology, learning about the physiology of pregnancy and labour and the development of a foetus right through to adolescence was truly fascinating and reminded me that one of the reasons why I wanted to study medicine is because the human body is amazing! We also did a lot about development in childhood and safeguarding issues around children. This really highlighted that as a doctor we aren’t just treating injuries and disease, we have a much larger role in society. Learning about the social aspects around medicine may not seem really relevant now but it will form a large part of our future careers!

Year 1 ended with a bang at our last session at UHCW. For the first time this year we had access to fresh human tissue. The surgical training centre team had dissected specimens of arms, legs, hearts and even heads for us to observe and revise from. This is a truly unique opportunity that doesn’t exist in many medial schools. At Warwick we are lucky to have the plastinated specimens all year round but their delicate nature limits how hands on you can be. With the fresh tissue you can feel the difference between a nerve and an artery and see the action of a tendon if you pull on it. It really is a brilliant learning opportunity and as a medical student I really appreciate the gift that the donors and their families have made to us.

I’ve spent my first Saturday of revision week back in the medical school with the Surgical Society for an anatomy revision day. There are lots of active societies at the medical school. I haven’t had much opportunity to get involved with many of them this year but I joined the surgical society as they run frequent revision sessions throughout the year for members. Tea, coffee and a seemingly unlimited supply of sweets gets us through long days where tutors, mostly 3rd and 4th years, help us go over key concepts and practice exam questions with us.

I find these sessions with the senior students really helpful as they can really guide you to the important information. As a first year graduate medical student it can be hard to identify the key points from lectures and also hard to know what sort of questions could be asked, getting tips and the chance to practice makes life a lot easier!

In our last week of first year we also had a lecture to introduce us to Advanced Cases 1, our first term in second year. Although everyone is very much preoccupied with getting through first year it was actually really motivating and inspiring to hear about second year. It was great to hear how we will be spending much more time on the wards, integrating all of our knowledge from first year and really learning how to apply it to patients in a clinical setting. I’m nervous of being let loose on the wards with only my clinical partner to protect me but I also can’t wait. Just one last push and I’ll be there. See you on the other side of exams…

Megan Earle : 08 Jun 2015 13:53 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

30 days, 720 hours, 43’200 minutes until exams…

Exam fever has turned into exam delirium and I find myself thinking of Dory from Disney’s Finding Nemo singing just keep swimming, just keep swimming as she swims through the dark and dangerous waters. Over the next 30 days I need to just keep revising as I pass through the murky and unfathomable waters of blocks 1 to 4 and grapple with new challenges presented by Block 5! It’s hard to maintain confidence in your own way of working when you find yourself comparing yourself to your fellow students some of whom seem to have no need to eat or sleep and seem to be able to reel off endless lists that you had forgotten even existed. I’ve always worked quite steadily, I try and make sure I don’t work too late and always make time for dinner that doesn’t just consist of cereal. Although I haven’t been very good at keeping up many extra activities outside of medicine this year I have started walking the 3 miles to the medical school a few times a week, making sure I have some fresh air which I think has really helped. Even during my PhD I didn’t let myself get too worked up over what other people were doing but I’m struggling to do the same in my first year of medicine. The amount of information is so mind boggling that most people have had to change their working style and mine has morphed and improved over the year, but have I done enough? I hope so, but I won’t know for sure until the end of June!

Apart from exam stress I have just finished my second week of block 5 Reproduction and Child health. We are covering some very interesting topics such as child development, conception and labour and because the block leads know we are revising at the same time they are doing everything they can to help us. Providing quizzes to help us consolidate our knowledge and providing quick recap sessions in response to questions sent in has been really helpful. The lecturers at the medical school really do go out of their way to help you if they can. A great example of this was a whole afternoon of revision on some of the trickier concepts from Block 1 and 2 which was run solely in response to requests from students. Peer support is now running two sessions a week and extra sessions on specific topics at the weekend. Ruder and more memorable mnemonics for various topics are passed around the cohort, and while I’ve never been so stressed in all my life the amount of help from the medical school and my fellow students is really encouraging.

I can’t just work constantly though and after a particularly long day this week I made my first trip to the SU bar the Dirty Duck on main campus with a few other medics who had had enough for the day. Chilling in the sunshine with a cold drink and new friends made me realise that we are all in the same boat and we just have to keep revising… only 43’200 minutes to go!

Megan Earle : 13 May 2015 09:36 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Looking back

After one week of my Easter holidays I’ve drank a year’s supply of tea and got a reasonable amount of work done. However when you realise that the only time you’ve left the house in 3 days is to put the bins out you know you’re working too hard! One of the reasons why I choose to return to university to study medicine was that I wanted a job where I wanted to work hard, I wanted to be so interested, and care so much that it wouldn’t matter how much effort it required. Now that I’m here I think maybe you can have too much of a good thing but I’m also glad that even after all the hard work that I’ve put in this year and the hard work still to come I can still enjoy learning and all the other experiences that come with medicine.

Over the holidays a lot of the medical school will be closed for the selection centres, and while I’ve been working from home in my pyjamas I’ve been thinking about my own experience at the selection centre last year. I was lucky to actually turn up on time to my selection centre, having stayed in a B&B in Kenilworth I laid out my clothes and had everything ready only to wake up in a blind panic realising I had forgot to set my alarm! Fortunately my nerves woke me up at 6am and I was actually an hour early, and had plenty of time to nervously chat with my fellow candidates. Interviews are always nerve wracking but having only had experience of panel interviews I definitely felt like the Warwick selection centre at Warwick was a leap into the unknown. The selection centre has changed since last year but I’m sure the candidates are just as nervous as I was.

Applying to medicine is like no other experience. For many applicants going through their 2nd, 3rd or 4th round of applications there are a lot of hopes and dreams on the line. Many have left successful careers to get work experience, or missed out on an offer first time round and undertook a tough science degree in order to meet the entry requirements. Myself I spent most of the application process wondering if I had made the right choice. Having studied hard for my PhD, secured a postdoctoral role in a different country deciding to apply to medicine meant that here wasn’t really any going back. Using my holidays to do work experience, volunteering on a hospital ward after an already long day at work and revising for the UKCAT on a weekend and all for at best a 1 in 10 chance of actually being accepted felt like a big gamble. After the assessment centre as I analysed everything I had said and done I realised for the first time just how much I wanted to get in and that it didn’t matter what I was giving up or the risk I was taking.

Now that I’m revising for my first summative exam of my medicine degree I can honestly say I made the right choice. I’ve doubted it many times but if I can actually say that I’m still enjoying learning new things while cooped up revising for exams then I must have made the right choice! Despite this realisation I think I should still make the effort to go outside for things that don’t involve waste disposal!

Megan Earle : 25 Mar 2015 11:24 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Selectioncentres Warwick |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Exams approaching!

With one week left of our musculoskeletal block before our Easter holidays you would think I would feel more excited. I’m looking forward to a break, catching up with friends and family but I am also acutely aware that I need to revise. I need to revise like I never have before because after the Easter holidays we have our final block (reproduction and child health) and then we have our summative exams. I’ve never had a final exam that tested me on everything before, my previous degree, A levels and even GCSEs were mostly modular so to say I’m nervous is an understatement! One of the biggest things about Warwick is that the focus on group work really does come into its own at this time of year. In my CBL group we have started to do lots of quiz’s and practice questions which is really helpful, we all have slightly different styles so it’s great to try other peoples questions.

Despite my nerves around exams I am looking forward to our Reproduction and Child health block after Easter. We had our final patient visit in the community this week where we met a child with a heath condition and their family. This case was really different to anything else we have seen in the community or in hospital, for a start our patient was too young for us to really talk to so we got most of our information from the parents and health visitors that work with the family. With younger patients the focus on supporting the family as a whole rather than treating the patient in isolation really struck me. Paediatrics is definitely an area I am interested in so I’m looking forward to learning more about it next block.

Another area I’m interested in is psychiatry. The Psychiatry Society here at Warwick have organised a buddy scheme where interested students get paired with a psychiatry trainee. I had my first meeting with my buddy where I got to ask lots of questions while enjoying tea and cake. Hopefully I will be able to shadow my buddy in the summer and also help out in an audit to get more experience in this area-the CV building never ends in medicine!

The list of possible OSCE stations for our summative exam was released this week which was slightly panic inducing and to top it off we were learning how to break bad news in clinical skills this week – not the easiest task! Practicing with a patient actor was really tough as our medical knowledge is still so limited so knowing what to say about diagnosis/prognosis is still a long way off but what we can do is make patents feel listened to and point them in the right direction for questions we can’t answer. Once we are on the wards more next year we might get asked some difficult questions so any practice we can get before then is a bonus!

Elections for MedSoc have also been taking place this week, candidates have been posting you tube videos of their manifestos (worth googling!) and have been bribing us all with cakes which is always welcome! I also managed to visit Warwick Castle for the first time since I moved here 7 months ago – better late than never and I very much enjoyed a well-deserved afternoon off!

Megan Earle : 18 Mar 2015 10:25 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Warwick Warwickcastle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem