Graduate Entry Medicine - Where to go?

[paco]

Hey all,

I have posted a few questions on the UL forum ("To UL or not to UL") about the GEM programme down there. I have heard a few thing about UL and I wanted some clarification from actual students. Some of them have taken the time to answer my questions very comprehensively and I appreciated that.

However, overall the general theme of the responses to my questions was a profound negativity towards the traditional medical schools.

Some charges laid against the established medical schools include:

"resistance from traditionalists" - in regard to recognition of PBL

"...archaic and obsolete notions of what medical education should look like"

"They had to sit through thousands of lectures so that must be the only way to do things. New and different = scary and dangerous. As it has been so shall it ever be and all that jazz."

"we don't need to be spoon fed at this stage of our education"

"RCSI last [in CAO order of preference] because I think that one of the great things about college is the fact that you get to meet people from a wide variety of backgrounds....You don't get this in RCSI"

"Some people just seem 'made' for a more didactic approach, and they really don't have fun with the independence of PBL. "

"very traditional and change adverse medical school fraternity"

"nobody cares where you qualify (Akin to LC points or even school (private versus community)"

"coming from a new, dynamic and innovative course gives us an added flexibility that I don't think exists in other college courses"

"Can anyone honestly say that they really 'learn' anything from a 50 minute didactic lecture?"

"After 10 minutes in a didactic lecture, most people are doing a Homer on it."

"Spoon fed students do ok when Mammy's around. Will Mammy hold your hand on the wards?"

Is the criticism justified? Are you all a bunch or arrogant "rich-kids", aloof and untrained in the real requirements of a career in medicine?

Some aspects of PBL seem attractive, admittedly the defensiveness of the UL cohort is slightly less attractive. Making this career change is a big decision from me and I want to get the best medical training possible. I would have no qualms going for a new learning style if it is better and I don't want to sign up to a traditional medical school if I am paying just for the name..


Your views?

Paco

[LV1]

Hey Dude, thought I'd give my 2 cents.

When you graduate from any of the medical schools in Ireland you will have the same degree as everyone graduating from other the medical schools in Ireland.
With the new system regarding intern jobs everyone is entered as an anonymous entity. You will have a no. that will depict what job you get regardless of where you went, its all to do with your final degree mark within your college. It’s not important right now so I’ll press on. Oh but I can tell you the reason it was brought in was to give non-traditional medical colleges a chance at acquiring an intern place as the hospital are inclined to accept people from traditional colleges, which seems to have worked ok for the past 150 yrs I would have thought.

I am currently a 1st year UCD GEM student. I have friends in various years throughout the college networks in Grad and Undergrad so I know a decent amount about the other colleges and I can tell they all have very interesting aspects from different perspectives. Which of course fantastic because it gives people a choice of how they’d like to approach medicine.

Here’s what I can tell you about UCD so far. I’m surprised to hear people talk about lack of patient contact when in the 1st week we learned the basic art of history taking (this is the ultimate learning tool in medicine) and then week 2, we had trained patients in with whom we could practice with. As with every college we had our various visits to the hospitals and community centers to get a taste of that side medicine which was fantastic. We also got to do a house call to GP patient to take a history and more importantly learn about the patient as a person not a study medium. Have a lot of people in final year who will tell you as they’ve told me being nice to and treating patients right will get you a lot further that treating them like objects.

This term we’ve all had 3 GP sit in visits on different Fridays, where we saw plenty of patients, got to perform some basic clinical skills; history taking, BP reading, musculoskeletal exams etc, and got a completely different aspect of medicine. Have to say I loved it.

We do have those dreaded “ lectures” but when they’re getting consultants in to give them the standard is pretty unbelievable. I, as a lot of my colleagues have noticed the actual stress of the “study load” is very mild compared to some of my other friends in the other colleges due to this standard as we remember more from our lectures.

We do have PBL courses intertwined with the various systems i.e. Cardio, Resp, GIT etc and I find them to be very helpful. I suppose it’s around 50% Lectures, 15% Tutorials, 10% PBL and 25% dissection room based. Clinical skill sessions are connected with the various systems also and comprises of 3 hour sessions every 1 to 2 weeks. To date we’ve covered: Upper and lower limb anatomy, diseases etc linked with the clinical skills modules to both, spine, thoracic and cardiorespiratory disease+therapeutics linked with clinical skills have also been covered.
Genetic diseases, diagnosis and treatments have been covered also. Actually here’s the list in semester order of what we’ve done.

Semester 1. Stage 1.
Human form- Upper/lower limb and spinal anatomy + clinical skills (patient interaction) course relevant to them.

Molecular Basis of Life and Disease- Genetic diseases, why, how and what can be done if anything.
General Pharmacology, pathology and microbiology.

Patient Centered Practice- Does what it says on the tin. Hospital visits and House Call

Cell-Cell Biology- Get to grips with a basic cell stuff to help you out with Pharmacology etc.

Elective Option- you can choice a module outside medicine to help broaden you mind, but they also offer medically related ones too.

Semester 2. Stage 1.
CardioRespiratory Physiology. Cardio and Resp are dependant on each other so it goes through both and shows how the work and then how they work with each other.

CardioRespiratory Disease. Same idea, but with diseases!

CardioRespiratory Therapeutics. The treatment of those damned diseases!

Population and Personal Health. Medical studies, psychology, sociology etc.

Principles of Infection. The world of Germs, what the do and the antibiotics we use to stop them.

Anatomy of the Thorax- Heart , lungs, ribs you name, then you find it. If it’s in the chest you’ll learn it.

As you can see Sem1 is like an intro to some stuff, and a more general view over the body, whilst SEM 2 is all to do with Cardiovascular and Respiratory systems . Hope this helps. Everywhere will have the same general outcome- you’ll be a doctor. So pick the place YOU feel YOU’LL get the most out of.
Apologies about all the mistakes wrote this in a bit of a hurry!

[gem2010]

It's a tough decision to make... There's pros and cons to all the schools and some peoples pros are other peoples cons etc etc. I think it's very much a personal choice, but it's definitely worth getting current students perspectives on it