Glasgow medics - help??

[Meg456]

Hi,
i'm completely new to this forum, but was just wondering if there were any glasgow medics out there willing to answer a few questions i have about studying medicine in glasgow? got an interview on Dec 1st so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[sara7000]

hey ive also got an int on the 1st.wht time is urs? gud luck u nervous?

[Meg456]

Cool! mines at 9.30, how about you? yeah pretty nervous but more nervous about the fact they record it and can therefore rewind and laugh at all the stupid stuff i said!how are you preparing for it?good luck also!

[sara7000]

ooh thts early mine is at 11:30.........................im using the ISCMedical book, but not really using it lol soo darn lazy how u preparing for it?

[Meg456]

cool, thats a good book, used it for my aberdeen one haha and planning to use it for this one, yeah just making sure i know their cirriculum, my ps and topical issues-although they ddidn't ask about anything in the news at aberdeen which was pretty gutting as i was all prepared for it!

[scohoust]

Hi,
i'm completely new to this forum, but was just wondering if there were any glasgow medics out there willing to answer a few questions i have about studying medicine in glasgow?

Ask away!

[doc99]

I'd be happy to help, I am in second year at the moment and I remember when I was in your position as if it was yesterday. This forum is great, a lot of the members have helped me, especially the likes of sefkhet and scohost, they still help me out to this day and I'm very grateful. So if you need any help at all, or would even like to meet up to discuss any worries you have I'd be happy to do so, I feel like I should try and help out to people like you guys, the same way my elder student, like Sefkhet and scohost, did and do.

[Meg456]

Thanks - messaged you both with some questions!

[sara7000]

Meg456 i am quite interested about what questions u asked. Is it ok for u to post them if they are not particularly personal? lolz

I also have some questons,would really appreciate some help

The Fixed Resource Sessions are 3-4 times for groups of 60-80. Are they once a month? Or for the whole year 3-4 times?

How often are the lectures for the entire group?

Are lectures always for whole year groups?

When you get a problem solving scenario, after brain storming, the group comes up with questions to answer, but do you get any hints as to what you have to do and what not for the "exams"? Because I spoke to a medical student and he said it is quote random what you have to learn, because it is EVERYTHING. What exactly does everything mean? Medicine is extremely broad, do you have any idea at all where to go from day 1?

Final question: Do facilitators actually TELL YOU THE ANSWER at the end? Because I heard they do have the answers for each scenario?

I know some really stupid, maybe even obvious questions, but just wanted to clarify

Thanks

[jaykay]

The Fixed Resource Sessions are 3-4 times for groups of 60-80. Are they once a month? Or for the whole year 3-4 times?
Roughly you get one FRS per PBL, so generally one or two a week - around 6-9 per block. Depending on what you do you will be in groups of about 60 - 80

How often are the lectures for the entire group?
Generally one or two a week if i remember correctly, maybe more at the start of a block but can't really remember ever having more than 4.

Are lectures always for whole year groups?
Yes. Otherwise they will be an FRS. Sometimes FRS's aren't necessarily in a lab and are basically a talk to a smaller group; a lot of the time they will be more interactive than a normal lecture. But if you have a plenary on your timetable then it is for the whole year

When you get a problem solving scenario, after brain storming, the group comes up with questions to answer, but do you get any hints as to what you have to do and what not for the "exams"? Because I spoke to a medical student and he said it is quote random what you have to learn, because it is EVERYTHING. What exactly does everything mean? Medicine is extremely broad, do you have any idea at all where to go from day 1?
You will be 'directed' to appropriate questions to try to ensure that you haven't missed anything major or done something totally irrelevant. In theory everything you do should be what you need to know for the exam, but obviously because the facilitator only aids you and doesn't tell you what the questions are inevitably sometimes you come away without certain questions you should have, and other times you have questions on topics you don't need to know. At the end of each block the uni will give you out objectives, which are basically the questions you should have covered, so in theory you should go back and make changes as appropriate. Having said that you will find that there are other ways of finding out what you actually need to know other than the objectives, but i won't go into too much detail about that here.
And no you don't have to learn EVERYTHING, you will find that in first year you actually don't need to know that much, but people (myself included) end up doing ridiculous amounts of work and it is only close to exam time, and after the exam you realise that you did way more than you needed to, but this isn't all bad it just means that in 2nd year you will have already covered some of the stuff that you needed to do and you will have a good work ethic.

Final question: Do facilitators actually TELL YOU THE ANSWER at the end? Because I heard they do have the answers for each scenario?
Facilitators have notes which cover the topics that you will do in each PBL. They don't tell you the answers at the end as they would basically be lecturing you since your pbl will be about quite a lot. As you are feeding back information they will help coax stuff out of you, and if someone is blatantly wrong about something they will in some way signal that it isn't right, or question it further. If there is a small disagreement over something they may tell you what they have, but most of the time the type of thing that people will be asking are quite small detailed things so they might not have the answer. I depends a fair bit on the facilitator themselves, some are very silent and will not give anything away expecting you to go away and find the answer yourself, others are more giving with information. This last statement also kind of applies to the other question you had. Some facilitators are very active in making sure your questions are very similar to what is required, whereas others may not really aid you too much.
I know some really stupid, maybe even obvious questions, but just wanted to clarify