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!