Week 2!

Hey! Well its week 2 here at Nottingham Medical School and we're finally settling down into some kind of rhythmn! Lectures have begun in earnest and all the clubs and societies have started up! Tonight is the infamous week 2 medics cocktail party held at a club in town. Medics from all years come and drink lots of (lovely?) cocktail from huge industrial size bins! Of course there are non alcoholic alternatives too! So in the midst of all this fun work still has to be done! Each week we have a small oral anatomy exam (a viva) which contributes towards our end of year mark in anatomy-so we have to prepare for that each week by reading up on the area of the body we will be dissecting. Nottingham is one of the few medical schools left that still gives medical students human cadavers (dead bodies) to disect from scratch instead of only using pre-disected specimins (prosections) to learn from. Anyway sorry for the short length of this post but i have to rush off and prepare my costume (the party is fancy dress!).

Week 1.........of year 2!

At Nottingham Uni they call freshers week "week one" (imaginative..no?). The medics get strongly involved in the fun right from the beginning-the Medical Society here (Medsoc) organizes loads of events and parties throughout the year, and its in week one that we have to convince all the freshers to join us! In all medical schools a Medsoc committee will run the social lives of all the other medics, here in Notts its a committee of 16, I'm on the committee this year as Sports Sec, in charge of all the medics sports teams (and there are lots..). A strong part of being at medical school is having a vibrant social life, medicine can be a very stressful course so its important to be able to unwind at the appropriate times, and Medsocs all over the country make sure this is possible!

With all the work that looking after the freshers this week is bringing its been quite easy to forget that I'm actually still on a medical course, but no need to worry...I was cruelly reminded of this by the 5 hours of lectures and 1 hour of histology (*trying* to spot things down microscopes) that I've just had! Thankfully they weren't too demanding as its only the first day! They were really just introductory lectures for a few of the new modules we will be studying this year! Last year we learnt about the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as well as the anatomy of the upper and lower limbs and thorax (chest cavity) and also some sociology and a bit of biochemistry! This year we learn about the other body systems (we've just started the alimentary system and the renal (kidneys) system! We also finish off the anatomy of the body and then do a bit more biochemistry! Its quite a hectic timetable-more demanding than the first year, which although tricky in places was fairly ok in terms of work load and difficulty! I also have to balance my work with medusas commitments and also playing rugby-so I imagine that this coming year will be the most challenging so far for a variety of reasons! I guess the old saying of medics working hard and playing hard really is true! Anyway, rugby training looms so this post will be ending here!

Welcome!

Hello!........and welcome to my med school life blog! My name is Oli and I'm a second year at Nottingham Med School. I suppose the first thing to do it tell you a little bit about Nottingham Med School and the course here. Its integrated which means that unlike the old style pre-clinical then clinical courses, my course involves patient contact right from the second week!! (run patients run........!!). Its also systems based-that means that instead of learning the physiology, pharmacology (drugs) and anatomy of (for example) the heart all at separate times in separate parts of the course we learn all the aspects of the heart-phys, pharm and anatomy at the same time in the same part of the course. This helps you to have a better idea of the system you're learning and how it integrates itself with the rest of the body's systems. A unique aspect of the Nottingham course is that all students completing the 3rd year of the course are awarded a Bachelor of Medical Science (BMedSci) degree. At other Medical Schools students have to take an extra year out (intercalation) to be awarded a similar degree. So basically everyone here gets an extra degree-although I suppose we have to work harder to get it!
The first two years here are largely lecture based, in the med school, 9 till 5 (ish). Having said that the course is very flexible and last year I found myself having many many lie-ins before 11 o clock lectures! In the first half of the third year all students research an area of medical science in detail and from that produce a dissertation to complete their BMedSci. After this the clinical course begins!Almost full time in the hospitals on rotation for the rest of the course, leading the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (BMBS). There is a large dose of clinical experience in the first two years, with clinical skills exams at the ends of year 1 and 2.

So that's the boring course introduction over.......yay! Don't worry......future posts will be much more succinct and (hopefully) much more entertaining and funny......whilst at the same time being informative and accurate and preparing you for a life at medical school!