Tips on Surviving Notts Medical School ..an individual's perspective

[sakura17]

Thanks a lot!! U've been such a great help..now i can confirm the day of my flight back to notts..Thanks again!!

[Medistorm]

Hi. How about the "living" part. The accommodation, what type, how far are they from Uni, rental cost, transport cost, food etc?

Thanks.

[midget_doctor_girl]

thanks for the advice, i start in september, as long as I definitly get my grades in the summer!!! So looking forward to it now!!!

[benl]

Great post ppl shud read this before sept, really useful.

Thanks

Ben

[lawyertodoctor]

Excellent posts.

I wonder if one of the Grad Medics out there could do a first year survival guide if there isn't one already?! Especially a non-science grad medic, but now I'm getting too picky..

[Saq2k7]

How you choose to continue the relationship is up to you.. however there have been several episodes of incest I'm sure.

loool Rofl Gawd that makes me laugh

[Little White Dragon]

Excellent posts.

I wonder if one of the Grad Medics out there could do a first year survival guide if there isn't one already?! Especially a non-science grad medic, but now I'm getting too picky..

I can try (and I'm sorry this is late for this year), but there are a few issues:
1. I haven't graduated med school yet, so whilst I'm a GEM survivor, I haven't reached the hallowed status of Stormchild!
2. The course structure has changed a bit since I did GEM because the copyright ran out on the PBL cases, so these have been rewritten completely.
3. I was a scientist before I started GEM.

I'm using the previous post as a template.

First term.

Definitely a good time to get involved with things and meet people. There's always a few events going on during fresher's fair. GEM has a few clubs of it's own. If you can't find a club for things that interest you, then you can start a club! The clubs at GEM tend to be more about getting involved than high performance, so if you're an achiever, then either look to see whether there's something within Derby or look at going over to Uni of Nottingham to meet your needs. People in my year took both approaches: I'm involved with a few things in Derby and I enjoy this because I get to meet some non-medics (as lovely as medics are, it can get a bit of a goldfish bowl after a while, especially during the GEM part of the course when all 90 people know what's happening with each other) - others went down the Uni of Nottingham route.

You would be foolish to be all play and no work though - lectures start in the first week and although they deal with the basics, you need these principles to fall back on. A downside of PBL/GEM is that during the GEM part of the course, you don't get any opportunity to go back and repeat topics, so it's difficult to take time out. If there's something that grabs you topic-wise, then you need to make the most of that week and perhaps spend a few extra hours in the library. I was very bad at reading up on lectures before the lecture itself, but I did usually go through my notes after the lecture as I've always found this to be a good way to cement stuff in (and sometimes it still doesn't stay!). However, you get an anatomy workbook for each block and I found that it was imperative to go through this in some detail before the workshop because otherwise I hadn't got a clue as to what was happening. You have to submit a portfolio at the end of the year and this is marked. In this portfolio, you have weekly diary sheets. Write these up every week - it's a 5 minute job and it will make your end of year essay easy as you can work your way back through the sheets. I was always a good girl and wrote up my sheets, but friend who had to write theirs retrospectively had a bit of a nightmare because you forget things really quickly. However I did find the value of these sheets beyond the essay to be limited.

In terms of clinical work, the med school will bring in patients into clinical skills sessions and you'll work with actors to simulate partiular situations. You'll also go to a GP surgery for one morning every block - the GPs differ in how much hands on they make you do - I enjoyed mine because I got to take lots of blood pressures, histories etc. All basic things, but about where I was at!

I'll reiterate the comments about buying stethoscopes and lab coats - the best deal is through the med school. When you get them, put your name on them - it's quite amazing how many people will have the same colour stethoscope as you. There are quite a range of books in the PBL rooms and the GEM library has a decent range. Additionally there are lots of online resources (including an online Kumar and Clark), so there's no need to go out and spend a fortune on buying books. A good anatomy text book is helpful, but I would try out a few by borrowing them from the library and see which one suits before shelling out cash.

Exams - You get an MCQ at the end of each six week block and an MCQ, MEQ (multiple essay questions - allow about 12 minutes per question depending on your exam technique style - the number of questions varies with the paper), clinical skills exams (based upon the skills learnt within that block) and Anatomy and Physiology vivas. The med school reserve the right to ask you questions from previous blocks. Particularly for the later clinical skills exams, a bit of practise on each other helps a lot because you end up being a bit slicker in the real thing. I always struggled with the history taking assessments, but you can practise these in the PBL sessions - either on the 2nd or 3rd session of the week, you can take it in turns to role play patient and doctor. The clinical skills exams are summative, but all other exams are formative, however there were suggestions that the exams at the end of the first year were going to become formative. The big exams for us, came in February of our second year and we had to pass these to move onto the clinical phase of the course.

Finances.

I don't know how to budget either!

There are quite a lot of threads on the matures section of this forum about finances. Bascially, there's the option of an NHS bursary from the second year onwards (when fees are paid too), but you get a reduced student loan. There are some on the course who aren't eligible for the bursary but still only get the reduced student loan, which is rather hard cheese. Additionally, you can apply for personal studies loans - don't know how hard these are to get in the current financial climate.

Possibility of acquiring an income - I'm aware that some people work during med school - some people are able to continue jobs that they had before med school, some work as locums (the pharmacists do so well at this) and some have part time jobs. There are quite a few medics who work as HCAs on the nurse bank - if you want to do this, it is best to apply early on because it takes them a while to process the applications, get CRBs etc. However, they are happy to take on med students for this role and sometimes you get a bit of extra teaching when on shift (although this isn't supposed to happen!). Personally, I've worked only during my holidays and am full of admiration for those that can find the time and energy to work at weekends during term time.

Transport - officially there's no parking on site, although there is a limited number of parking permits for out of hours parking. A car was useful for getting to my GP surgery as when I was reliant on public transport I was having to get the 3 minutes to 7am bus to get there on time and the med school had a nasty habit of assuming that you could travel back from a GP visit by teleportation or floo network or something because they timetabled in lectures for 15 minutes after the end of the GP surgery (not helpful if you're out in the sticks for this!). However for everyday a bike is pretty good. I did my first clinical placement in Mansfield and again found a car pretty useful for this - more because it allowed me to nip back to Derby to continue some extra-curricular past-times. The guys in Mansfield without cars used buses and people were happy to offer lifts, so it wasn't the end of the world not to have a car. We've just been informed that the multi-storey car park at the QMC has been shut down by the Health and Safety executive and apparently parking is now a nightmare at the QMC.

Housing - the enduring question is always Nottingham or Derby? I bought a house in Derby - the hope was that this would be an investment over the 4 years of the course. Quite a few make use of halls in the first year. A number of people rented in Derby for the first year and a half or so and then moved to Nottingham. It's up to you really. If you get posted to either Mansfield or Lincoln for clinical placements, then you do get free accomodation whilst you are there. I requested Derby for my placements this year and got everything I asked for - I suspect that this was because all the 5-year students and a fair proportion of GEMs asked for Nottingham placements. The way the system works is that you put the placement locations in order of preference and submit these online. There's a computer programme that sorts it all and apparently aims to give everyone as close to their choice as possible. However the introduction of this system meant that we had to forfeit the possibility of swapping. There are advantages and disadvantages to all the sites.

This is now very long, so I'll stop here.

LWD

[Gizmo says -]

what a marvelous postie!

all the new GEMs will be in good shoes now.

[ZChange]

"at the end of the course, all students attend the cremation of their cadaver" That's a joke right?

[Spencer Wells]

"at the end of the course, all students attend the cremation of their cadaver" That's a joke right?

It's normal for medical students to have to attend a memorial service of some sorts for their cadaver - be this a burial or a cremation. It's really the very least that you can do after they left you with such a gift.