Unimelb 2014 entry medicine interviews finished

Yesterday was the last day of the interviews for 2014 medicine entry at the University of Melbourne. I have heard that they have had a shake up on the topics being assessed in the interview!

I hope you have all done well in your interviews. Now it is the long wait until offers.

Transition from university to hospital

Over the past few weeks, I've had to adjust to the hospital environment. Unlike at university where people can let their guard down at times, at public places in the hospital we must be prudent in our manner so that patients and doctors do not have a bad impression of us.

We are required to dress neatly, and at my clinical school, males are required to wear ties. They also like to send us txt messages to make announcements to us. So I guess they've kept up with the 21st century, unlike some primary and high schools. That reminds me of a UTAS professor who advocated for this kind of contact with high school students a few years ago. He said (paraphrased) "imagine the effect of a txt saying 'the principal wants to see you now'". Anyway, that's an aside.

Maybe our clinical school is old fashioned in some ways, but we are advised to refer to patients, other students and staff by their surname when on the wards, unless a patient told us they preferred their first name. That reminds me of a study showing that generally speaking, those who preferred to be referred to by surname rather than first name were older.

There is also the aspect of confidentiality. I am not someone who likes to talk about other people's secrets. However, for the purpose of improving our interview skills, I do have to debrief with my buddy and/or other people present at the time when I was doing the interview. During this time, we must make sure that others who were not present are not around. Another issue of confidentiality is that pulling the curtains around a bed when interviewing patients really doesn't prevent sound going through, but aside from bringing people into other rooms (which generally isn't done), we really don't do anything to stop others in the room hearing.

And finally, sometimes when I want to go from A to B quickly, I sometimes like to go down steps quickly and jump the last few steps before turning around to the next set of steps. Of course, it's not as extreme as sliding down the rails. But I was instinctively running and jumping down stairs a few days ago one or two times before realizing that maybe it wasn't such a good thing to do in a hospital as a medical student wearing a tie and having a hospital ID card.

[update] First clinical week completed.

Yesterday I finished my first week of clinical school. My clinical school decided to give us a relatively light first week. We only started at 8.30 on two days and only finished later than 3 pm once. We will definitely get longer hours in future weeks.

This week, our clinical groups were assigned to look at different parts of the hospital and report back. Our group looked at the kitchen. Our hospital is not small and also supplies food for other places, so the kitchen has an efficient production line process, where people at different parts of the process have different jobs; while still rotating the meals from day to day. Very impressive!

Another thing I have to do this year is get used to receiving online lectures, although the vast majority will still be in person; especially at the clinical school I go to. We didn't have any last year, and it took me a while to find them on the new IT system they have for medicine, but I've managed to find them now.

[update] MD2 starts next week.

Tomorrow will be the last day of my Immediate level Intensive Summer Course in Chinese. As I said earlier in my blog, my Chinese is not as good as I would like it to be, so this summer I decided to enroll in a course to improve it. If it doesn't clash with the start of the year for medicine next year, I might join it again next year if they have it available.

Today we were able to purchase the subject guides for second year medicine in the bookshop for $36. Here's what the whole pack looks like:

Since I'll be starting medicine again next week, I won't be available as often for GAMSAT and VCE tutoring; definitely not available during morning and afternoon of weekdays. Since I won't be able to satisfy all prospective demand as the GAMSAT approaches, anyone new who initiates contact regarding tuition from now on will have slightly increased fees. That said, the fees are still a lot lower than other GAMSAT tutors I have seen. See the GAMSAT Science 100 + VCE tutor link on the top of the page for updated information regarding tutoring.

Happy new year!

I think it's safe now to say that we have survived 2012. I hope that 2013 will be a good year for everyone.

This year I'll be spending most of my time in the hospital. It will be a different experience to sitting in lectures and classrooms for most of the day, but there will be some lectures still. I'll have to improve my clinical skills a lot this year if I want to get good grades.

Good luck if you are sitting the GAMSAT this year and trying to get into medical school. Right now I am available to tutor for the GAMSAT or VCE math methods, specialist, chemistry or physics at the University of Melbourne or Monash. See the GAMSAT Science 100 + VCE tutor tab at the top of the blog for more information. Right now, I can tutor most times apart from around 1.30 to 3.30 pm. However, when university starts for Medicine again on 4 February, I will be more restricted to tutoring after uni hours and on weekends.

In more unrelated news, Girls' Generation released a new song recently, but I don't like it as much as most of their previous songs. Nowadays I listen to other artists more, including IU. I linked a music video of one of IU's songs in one of my posts one or two months ago (아이유 - 너랑 나), although it was all in Korean, and with some "improper" word usage.

Also, it seems like the computers in the biomedical library at UniMelb have very annoyingly had their sound disabled, even when putting in headphones! Not only does it mean that we can't watch youtube videos properly, it also means that anyone who actually wants to study and re-listen to lectures through echo360 cannot do so. Silly idea I think. I can anticipate an influx of complaints once the standard semester starts if it's not changed!

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.

2013 entry: UniMelb DDS offers released. GEMSAS medicine offers soon...

It seems like the first round of University of Melbourne DDS offers were released today for local students. Congratulations to everyone who has received one!

Both CSP and FFP places were released. If you received no offer or received a FFP offer this round, there is some chance that you will get upgraded as people decline their dentistry offer for a place at  dentistry at another university (eg Sydney Dentistry or UWA dentistry) or for a medicine offer.

The GEMSAS offers for medicine are scheduled for release tomorrow, and will come out after the GEMSAS simulations are complete. It seems like they're up to simulation 16 at the moment...

End of UniMelb medicine interviews, 2013 entry.

Today was the last day for UniMelb medicine and physiotherapy interviews for prospective local students for 2013 entry. Some other universities, such as ANU, have also finished interviewing locals for their medicine admission processes, while other universities will be finishing their interviewing processes soon.

Anyway, since UniMelb have finished their interviews, that means that MD1 students will be back to uni next week (which is the same as undergraduate students at the university). I have been reading some of my pathology textbook, although I also decided to refresh my mind about history taking and examinations. Although PCP1 is only worth 12.5 credit points compared to FBS 81.25 credit points, I still shouldn't neglect it...

[update] Semester 2 midsemester break (MD1 2012). Unimelb interview week. GAMSAT UK today.

I've finished class for today. Now there is a one week break before the rest of first year medicine at Melbourne. I'll be using the break to catch up on rest, revising lectures and hopefully reading more of the pathology textbook.

Meanwhile, the interviews for 2013 entry for Melbourne medicine onshore applicants are also coming up next week. Good luck if you're a prospective Melbourne medical student with an interview!

The GAMSAT UK is also today. Good luck for anyone taking it!

2013 entry GEMSAS interviews start

Today is the start of the midsemester break for the University of Melbourne undergraduate students. Over the next few weeks, the universities in GEMSAS other than UQ will interview prospective local medical students.

For UniMelb, interviews will start on 24 September, in just over a week's time. That is the same time that I have my midsemester break for Medicine, which is one week less than for undergraduate students at UniMelb. Last year they used the CSL rooms on level 7 and in the basement. However, at the moment the basement is undergoing renovations, so I guess they'd need to have slightly different arrangement. They expected the basement renovations to finish earlier, but now they expect it to be unavailable for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, my table tennis bat is stranded in the locker there...

Good luck if you have an interview coming up!

University of Melbourne Open Day: Sunday 19 August 2012

On the coming Sunday, 19 August, the University of Melbourne is having its open day. Anyone considering going to the University of Melbourne to study is greatly encouraged to attend to find out more about what it is like to study at UniMelb.

The Melbourne Medical School will be opening the Anatomy and Pathology Museum to the public for the day. There will also be demonstrations of surface anatomy body painting by students of the Medical School, and the opportunity to ask questions to current medical students and staff.

For more information, see the Open Day website.

Melbourne University Student Appeal 2012

Like last year, I am involved with the Student Appeal this year for the University of Melbourne. The funds raised in the appeal go towards rent assistance for students who are finding it hard to pay the rent. Donations of $5 or more are matched by the University.

If you want more information or are interested in donating towards the fund, see the official website or the facebook page for the Student Appeal. Donations of $2 or more are tax deductible as usual. Any contributions would be greatly appreciated by the students under financial stress receiving the aid.

[update] Medical test results

For any UniMelb people, this doesn't have anything to do with our test two weeks ago. Sorry to disappoint.

Recently I went for a fasting blood test. I thought it was good to do, since I haven't checked my cholesterol and fasting glucose and all that before, and I thought it was good to see if I needed any diet or lifestyle modification.

Today I received my results. Cholesterol, glucose, liver function, kidney function and FBE tests were all normal. However, my Vitamin D was slightly below the reference interval. It's not too surprising since it's winter in Melbourne, but it seems like maybe I should have more sunlight exposure during winter or drink more milk.

Another thing I noticed was that the contact person for some of the tests that I had was someone who lectured and held a tute at UniMelb about liver function tests! That was a pleasant surprise. But after all, UniMelb does have a policy that all lecturers for Medicine are either clinicians or researchers.

Anyway, it's good to know that I don't need to make too many changes to my current diet.

[update] Half the midyear holiday is over already. End of exam period for UniMelb Undergrad.

Tomorrow marks the half-way point of my winter recess for Medicine. Unlike undergraduate courses at Melbourne, we only get two weeks of holidays between semesters. Ah well. If it was too long, maybe I'd get too bored. Last year it didn't feel that the holidays were long because of the time preparing for the USyd interviews, but before that I probably felt that the uni holidays were a bit long.

Today is the last day of the exam period for UniMelb. If you have recently sat an exam, I hope you have done well. For UniMelb, the undergraduate results for the semester are scheduled to be released by Friday 6 July in two weeks time, although many will come out before that date. Results generally come out on the Study Plan on the day before they are out on the Results Service page, and the results going onto the Study Plan coincides with the subject coming off the enrolled subject list on the portal homepage.

[update] UniMelb clinical placement allocations out.

Today the clinical placement allocations were out for the Metro 1 and Metro 2 clinical zones. I was lucky to be allocated to the Metro 1 clinical zone (closest to the city and to my home), and today I was lucky again to receive my first preference of St Vincent's Clinical School.

It seems like this year in Metro 1, Austin was the least preferred with respect to the places available. Last year there were stories of people who put RMH third on their preference list of Metro 1 (St Vincent's, RMH and Austin) getting RMH, but this year that was true with Austin.

There are a two main reasons that I put St Vincent's first. It is the closest to my home, and the most convenient for me. I also liked the idea of having more tutorials, since I prefer things to be taught to me rather than having to look up things for myself. On the other hand, it has a reputation of being stricter than the other clinical schools, but I felt that those two reasons made it worth it. I'll see next year whether it was a good decision or not.

Science and Medicine

The hard sciences of chemistry, physics and especially human biology have traditionally been a large part of medical courses. It had been known that sufficient understanding of human biology was required to be able to treat patients in a satisfactory manner. However, due to criticisms that medical courses in the past focused too much on the science and not enough on the softer aspects such as communication, ethics and population health, there has been a trend towards adding more of these aspects of medicine into medical courses at the expense of science.

Some doctors now comment that certain medical courses do not teach enough science, putting too much emphasis on the other components. I wouldn't be too surprised if that was true in some universities. I hoped that Melbourne got the balance right though.

So far though, a quarter of the way into first year, I don't feel that they have overemphasized the aspects other than sciences in our course. In our subject of Foundations in Biomedical Science (we don't have separate ethics subjects or population or personal development subjects; the other two subjects for first year are Principles of Clinical Practice 1 and Student Conference 1), the vast majority of our lectures are about biomedical science as the name suggests.

There are a few lectures of population health. One type of "population health" lecture is about evidence based medicine (EBM), encompassing a limited amount of biostatistics and some things about appraising studies, which would be quite important in medicine in terms of keeping up to date with current best practice. We don't actually learn that much about how to calculate the statistics too, unlike in first year biomed. I think EBM definitely has a place in the course.

The other type of population health lecture is about social determinants of health, including global health. We also haven't had many of these lectures so far either, so I don't feel that it has been overemphasized in the course at Melbourne.

Surprisingly, we have only had one ethics lecture so far, which was more of an introduction, in foundation week. Maybe they couldn't cram everything into the one preclinical year, so they decided to mainly give us the foundations in science to learn, and delayed the teaching of other things until later in the course. But in any case, I am pleasantly surprised that Melbourne hasn't seemed to have overemphasized the non-bioscience aspects of the course from what I have experienced so far. Then again, Melbourne does seem to have a reputation of being somewhat "old-school" in that regard, and that does seem to be the case to me.

[update] First anatomy prac session for medicine

Today I had my first anatomy prac for medicine. It's been about one and a half years since my last anatomy prac in biomed, since I didn't major in anatomy. I was looking forward to it again; feeling the tough arteries spring back and poking at lungs.

When I heard that it was going to be "self directed" (or words to that meaning), I thought: "not again". But it was OK if you listened to demonstrators whenever they said something. Sometimes the demonstrators would teach beyond what questions were asked, and you could even feel as if it was a normal tutorial without thinking it was self directed.

The interesting part about today was seeing an anatomical variation on a specimen. I noticed that the arch of aorta of one of the specimens ran to the right of the trachea instead of to the left. It was good to see for myself, because in anatomy we usually just learn the case in the "majority" of people.

We don't seem to have many anatomy pracs in Melbourne, or lectures for that matter. Then again, we were all required to do a subject of anatomy before entering medicine at Melbourne as a prerequisite, so we all had to do about 44 hours of anatomy before entering to start with (according to the anatomy second year subject for Bachelor of Science handbook link from Melbourne).

Anyway, it seems like I'll be having a dissection prac in 3 weeks; after the midsemester break. I'm looking forward to it. I didn't do any dissections before in anatomy, since I didn't do my major in it and at Melbourne you don't get to dissect in the second year anatomy subject.

[update] Urine collection day.

If anyone wants to know, today is the day that I am doing a 24 hour urine collection. At UniMelb, there are people who are running a study determining the effects of the polymorphisms of a sodium channel gene on blood pressure. All the first year medical students were invited to take part in the study to aid in the research of the professors at the university.

Of course, what the uni gets out of it is about 300 more students to get data points out of, without needing to pay financial reimbursement. They need large data sets for determining the effects of certain genes, especially if they do not have a large impact on blood pressure.

For the students, they made it an opportunity for us to learn how to measure blood pressure by auscultation. I think I can do it reasonably comfortably now. It's a lot easier in a quiet room than a prac room where everyone is talking though.

It was also marketed as an opportunity for us to get involved with research, since the University of Melbourne is a highly research intensive university, and because the MD had a focus on research; having a semester dedicated to it.

Finally, they told us that it was good to experience doing a 24 hour urine collection so we know how patients feel when we tell them to do it later on, and so we can explain it better. Meanwhile, my collection bottle seems to be filling at too high of a rate, so maybe I should reduce my water intake for the rest of the day. I don't want to have to carry two urine containers to uni!

[update] Foundation week is over.

Today marks the end of foundation week for UniMelb medicine. After today, there will be a lot more to learn again.

During foundation week, there were a few interesting experiences to be had. The clinical visit was somewhat interesting to see the doctor interaction with patients, but since I just started medicine, I didn't get to do much.

Some of the rest of the week I didn't find as interesting though, although they were things you'd sort of expect to find during uni orientations about support services and all that. We had to fill in a form for feedback on the foundation week, but although I didn't find certain parts of it interesting, I didn't think that I should make too much comment about it, because those parts would still seem "necessary" for orientation. I really don't know how they can present certain things in a more interesting way either.

So as a result, the comments on my feedback form probably weren't that helpful. I didn't even write my main comments in English. And if they did decide to translate it, it wouldn't be relevant to orientation week at all.

Written:

지금은 소녀시대! 앞으로도 소녀시대! 영원히 소녀시대!

(Right now it's SNSD! From now on it's SNSD! SNSD forever!)

순리에 맞춰 사는 것 넌 길들여져 버렸니? 괜찮니?
암담한 세상이 그댈 주눅들게 만드니? 괜찮니?

(Lyrics from The Boys-SNSD:
Living according to reason Have you gone soft? Are you okay?
Has this gloomy world intimidated you? Are you okay?

Credits: soshified taengbear & minigiglo for lyric translation)

Anyway, I think next week will probably be more interesting. Back to learning more biosciences again! There will also be a dinner next week celebrating 150 years of teaching Medicine at the University of Melbourne; the oldest medical school in Australia.

[update] First day of medical school

Today was my first day doing Medicine at Melbourne Medical School. It was quite a new experience with the medical course, because the format of material given is not the same as undergrad. I had an experience with CSL (case supported learning) today too, which was interesting.

There were quite a few indemnity insurance companies also which were represented today, and I joined one of them because it was free for students. I hope I never need to rely on them though, but mistakes do happen in medicine.

It was nice to see some of the same faces in medicine as from Biomedicine at Melbourne, as well as a considerable number of new faces. This is probably the first time that I've known so many people in my next stage of study studying the same course as me, because not many people from my primary school went to my secondary college, and not many people from my secondary college went to my uni, and only one other person in my year went into the same course as me. The majority or plurality of people from my secondary college who went to uni went to Monash.

There were quite a few lectures today about housekeeping issues. Some of it was interesting, and some less so. Maybe it would be more interesting or engaging if I didn't have to spend all that time learning this professionalism or "what makes a good doctor" stuff to say during the interviews.

What I liked about today was the commitment that the coordinators of CSL at Melbourne seemed to give about upholding a high standard for the basic science given, so that we know what is happening within the patient at a deep level. Because we only have one preclinical year at Melbourne, I was wondering if they would cut out a lot of the stuff. By looking at the notes of the curriculum development before today, it seems like they tried not to cut out stuff, by making anatomy, physiology and biochemistry prerequisites, and integrating some of the remaining biological science teaching to be taught in clinical years, but it still seems like a major task fitting a lot of things that most other graduate entry medical courses fit in two years in just one year.

I hope they've done it well. It would be a shame if Melbourne stopped their long tradition of upholding a rigorous treatment of their medical course and basic sciences, which they started from the beginning of their medical program's existence 150 years ago with a five year undergraduate program instead of a four year undergraduate program which was predominant at the time, and with Melbourne graduates having the highest first sitting pass rates of the Basic Sciences Examination of the RACS (Royal Australasian College of Surgeons) as recently as the mid-2000s.

(For the record, during this period, USyd had the lowest pass rate in that exam due in a large part to their low emphasis of anatomy in their original graduate entry medical program, although this was recently resolved with a trebling of hours devoted to learning gross anatomy after their review in 2007.)

Anyway, I will be having my first clinical visit tomorrow. I'm lucky that my clinical visit for tomorrow isn't too far away, given that some people have clinical visits some distance away at the other side of the city to where they live.