Tips for Year 3

[Rake]

That's really helpful Emma! Is it true that you can kiss the social life goodbye during the Acute Care pathway and if so what makes it so much more demanding?

Don't worry if you don't understand any of this as you do get another weeklong induction (which some of us liked to think of as freshers week for clinicals!), but do put the effort in for your first feedback session cos they're hardcore and certainly shocked me when I first got to 3rd year!

[Yixian]

Blargh, week long induction.. I bet it could be done in a day! The clock is ticking, I just wanna graduate already!! xD A friend of mine I went to college with is starting F1 in a few weeks.. if it wasn't for AS level psychology so would I ;(

Oh apparently General Surgery lecture Notes is a good book for year 3, lots have recommended it, someone even called it the "year 3 survivors guide". I picked up a copy and it looks v good:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/General-Surg...0523935&sr=8-1

[smile88egc]

Acute care is more demanding of your time, only because there are more timetabled placements and also surgical weeks where you can literally spend days watching surgery (this is where you'll learn most of your anatomy). I wouldn't say you had no social life though, it's all relative. Ward care is a doss pathway, IAC is moderate and AC the worst but certainly not terrible.
To be honest, I can't really quantify how different the course will be in terms of time demands from what you've been doing in 2nd year, because it's been so long since I was pre-clinical I really can't remember! :S

[The Fantastic Dr. Fox]

How far in advance do we find out what placements we will be on? i.e. will we know that on week 3 of ward care we will be doing urological placements for example.

[Rake]

I think we get a timetable for the whole term before the end of the summer, so we'll know where we're going to be every week between now and Christmas. Quite keen to get SSU allocations too!

[chris5656]

Have any plymouth people (3rd yrs) had their course information sent out yet? I know the truro people have had a some stuff through the post.....

[Rake]

Nowt yet. What sort of info did the Truronians get?

[Dr Noodle]

Emma can I ask you, when does the school first give us info on applying for electives?

[Yixian]

Emma can I ask you, when does the school first give us info on applying for electives?

I think third years usually get a lecture on it in their first week!

[smile88egc]

Yeah they will talk about it in induction week, but not tell you anything useful really, just emphasise that you need to start organising it. There's hardly any guidance on how to apply for electives, they really do leave it up to you to get your own sorted.
The electives conference is a really good event to come to, it's held in september and 5th years will be there in each locality giving presentations about where they've been and what they've done and you can pick up loads of good tips there.
All you really need to do at this stage is think about the specialty you want to do (you can do 2, 4 weeks of each which i would recommend just to get a wider breadth of experience), and also about the location (again you can do 2 but this increases the costs somewhat and means you have to write 2 elective proposals, not good).
I'd also recommend visiting a hospital that has a medical school/ university attached as they often have elective co-ordinators who can set them up for you, provide accommodation etc. which makes the planning so much easier.
Also think about when your ISCE will be and also the resit ISCE as you don't want to have to come back and ruin your elective should you be required to do it.