Cambridge....clinical style

So i've now finished my first week on the clinical medicine course at Cambridge. It's been quite fun (aside from the eternal pain-in-the-ass of communication skills lectures that is!). Every medical school you go to will teach you communication skills (they're in fashion at the moment i'm told).

Essentially, they are teaching us how to conduct a medical interview with a patient. Fair enough. But then you get some patronisingly simple 3 hour lecture about how to build up rapport with a patient. I mean, we all build up rapport with each other when we socialise, I don't really see much difference between that and what we're being taught.......after all patients are real people too!

Anyway rant over. Aside from comm skills we have also learnt how to take blood and do some of the major examinations of the body (for example cardiovascular and respiratory). Now I did these in my first few years at Nottingham so it wasn't new, but the guys and girls that have been at Cambridge pre-clinically havn't done them before. I've always heard about how un-clinical the course is here pre clinically but I don't think I really ever imagined to what extent the above is true. If you want clinical stuff in your first few years Cambridge and Oxford really arn't the places to go!

A big change!

Major changes are underway in my medical career! Having completed 3 years of my degree at Nottingham i'm switching medical schools to Cambridge. It's a bit unusual to do it like this, but I think it will be fun and I hope to teach the hard wroking cambridge keen beans how to have some fun nottingham style!

So I start my new course in 2 weeks, i've been allocated to a college and i'm really excited. The fact i'm switching means i'll be repeating a bit of stuff from Notts though as we start clincial stuff earlier than Cambridge. So for the next 6 months i'll be doing more medicine and surgery! should be super good by the time i finish!