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General thoughts on MD1

MD1 has not been "easy", but I don't think many bioscience subjects in biomed were easy to learn either. Like those subjects, there is quite a lot that you just have to "know".

Compared to undergrad, I don't think it would be much more workload per week than say four "human bioscience" type subjects after first year level. Maybe undergrad was easier, but not by that much. I had a Biomedicine background, and majored in pharmacology, so I learned a significant proportion of content from the first few blocks (foundation, cardiovascular, respiratory) already in undergrad. However, the ways in which MD1 might be harder are:

• In undergrad I didn't have a full load of biosciences. Most of my other subjects were a walk in the park compared to those second and third year bioscience subjects.
• In the MD there was only a week after the end of class to revise 36 weeks of material before our first exam, but in undergrad there was always at least 9 days, and we only learned a semester (12 weeks for undergrad) at a time. It therefore is almost impossible to cram in the MD if you did so in undergrad.
• If you didn't do many human bioscience subjects in undergrad, there would be more new content to learn. That said, I only filled in one elective or free subject (out of 2 electives and 2 free subjects for biomed) with a bioscience subject, so I certainly did not seek to maximize the bioscience content of my biomed degree unlike what some others may have done.
• In the MD you also have to do clinical skills, which are different to written exams. You will need practice partners if you want to practice them. In first year, there is not much time to practice within class.
• The short answer exam is a bit stupid. Maybe I should have spent more time practicing my writing speed instead of practicing USMLE style questions to remember concepts correctly. Also, my handwriting is not that good at the best of times, so it's especially a struggle to write fast. Typing is different though. That said, writing may be easier for "mechanisms" still if you don't need them to be neat.
• The CSLs require "self-directed learning" involving searching up the learning issues before the next class. I personally don't feel it's very efficient compared to someone actually teaching us, although I do see the merit in presenting symptoms and diseases in the context of clinical cases to facilitate memory. I didn't revise any of the CSLs before the exam though. You don't miss out on much if you revise the lecture notes and skip CSL revision (maybe one question here and there), but you will miss out on a lot of the exam if you revise CSLs and skip lecture revision.

Apart from that, as far as first year exams are concerned, if you want to buy just one textbook, get a pathology one (Robbins and Contran Pathologic Basis of Disease). If you want to do the USMLE though, then there's stuff which isn't covered for many areas in first year MD (many med schools have two preclinical years instead of one). They would integrate some of it into the clinical years. How much? I will find out in the coming years. I'm not planning to sit the USMLE at the moment, but I do have the Step 1 revision book from Kaplan.

As far as grades are concerned, my average for first year is about 77.5. I hope to be able to get the "degree with distinction" which requires a weighted average of 80 (weighting first year 30%, 2nd year 30%, 3rd year 30%, scholarly selective 10%). The deficit isn't that great so I should be able to make it up, but I'll have to improve my clinical skills.

Finally, if you really want to choose a major with the most overlap with medicine (although it's not something I'd advise), it seems like anatomy had the highest proportion of all single disciplines in the midsemester tests. Needless to say, maximizing the amount of bioscience subjects would generally increase the overlap compared to other types of subjects. As far as my major subjects are concerned, the "drug discovery" and "drugs in biomedical experiments" subjects didn't help much with first year, although the biomedical experiments subject may become helpful if I do my scholarly selective in basic science. "Drug treatment of disease" was quite helpful; a lot more so than "drugs affecting the nervous system" I thought.

[update] OSCE marks released

Probably a week ago now, the OSCE results were released. I couldn't post here though since I was in China.

This time, I got two scores just about on the average (within 0.5 sd), one score about 1 sd below, and one score just on the pass mark at about 2 sd below the average (knee exam). Even though they said they'd only give feedback for failed stations, they gave me feedback for that station. I wish we could have feedback for all stations though.

Apparently for the content marks of that station I got 22/24, but my overall mark was 27/40. I guess that means my "non-content" marks were only 5/16... I am surprised they are worth so much, although it is said that most communication is non-verbal. I wonder if I lost most marks for "non-content" things on other stations too.

Anyway, it seems like I did better than the last OSCE (when one was >1 sd below and one station was below the pass mark; >2 sd below). I haven't done a statistical test though. I hope by the next OSCE time my skills can become at least at the average. There should be more opportunities to practice next year since we are in the hospitals.

[update] Back from China

I have finally returned home now after being in China and Hong Kong for almost 3 weeks. The trip had highlights, although also lots of boring portions. When I was around 10 years old I used to really like traveling. However, now that I've been to several different places, there's less and less substantially different things to see each time. After a while, a lot of it just becomes "another rock, another lake, another building, another road"...

Anyway, this was the first time I went to China and Hong Kong. I won't go into all the details of the trip, but here's a few "take-away" points I got:

• The cities are quite developed now. That said, there's still a significant amount of squat-toilets there (in mainland China that is. I didn't notice any squat toilets in HK).
• I particularly like the count-down timers on the vehicle and pedestrian traffic lights in Chinese cities (esp Shanghai), which I also noticed in some places in Malaysia and Singapore when I was there. I haven't noticed any of them in Australia.
• The train system in Guangzhou and Shenzhen reminds me of Singapore's MRT. I'm quite sure they run better than the Melbourne trains, and in Shenzhen a single trip fare on a train or bus is only 2 RMB!
• Facebook and Blogger are blocked in China. I also notice that my blog view count has reached 0 for several days for probably the first time in the history of my blog since I made it (maybe because I told everyone I'd be away beforehand). Anyway, I'm back now. (*EDIT* Hmm now I think maybe my website was blog site was blocked because my google account got locked. They thought it was suspicious activity when I tried to log on in China and HK, but I didn't bother to unlock my account since I didn't have a mobile number there... Can anyone confirm any difficulties getting to my blog site within the past two weeks?)
• Even though the prices of electronic goods may be cheaper in store in Hong Kong (Mong Kok) than Australia, for the particular models of phone I was looking at the prices for, the shop prices in Hong Kong are still more than on the internet in the cheapest Australian websites (although that might be a bit more than on the internet in HK websites delivered to HK addresses).
• Hong Kong has an excellent Airport Express train service where you can check in luggage (in Kowloon) before boarding a train to the airport. Melbourne doesn't even have a train to the airport!

Now that I'm back, I'll be available to tutor for the GAMSAT and VCE again

[update] MD1 results released

Today MD1 results were finally released. If you are wondering, I got 80 (H1) in FBS and 61 (P) in PCP. I guess that means I'll be going onto next year.