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Med school life discussion thread

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Stick:
Having spoken with a few MD1 students, I'm hearing there's definitely a step up in workload. Some people are telling me though that compared to undergraduate, which was largely focussed on being competitive enough in order to get into medical school, you should instead be less concerned about perfection when it comes to grades and try to be more holistic in your professional and personal approach to study/life. For example, I've heard from a couple of people that it's like impossible to study everything, so there's an onus on the student to study the things they think are particularly important or are known to be areas of weakness, and eventually draw the line as to when understanding is reasonable. How true is this? I've always been fairly concerned with marks but I think I'm starting to realise there's a lot more to it than that and perhaps being intense about course content at the expense of all else isn't necessarily a wise thing in the long term. At the same time, I'd hate to "back off" in that area and then suffer the consequences. Thanks. :)

pi:
You'll go crazy (or drive everyone around you crazy - arguably worse because in a "people profession" having people like you is a /good/ thing) if you focus too much on marks in med. It's just not realistic to learn everything, because it's actually impossible. Med is really a different ball game; the goal, in my opinion anyway, is to know enough so that you can back yourself to be a good junior doctor and to know things on the ward. There are people who I've seen slave away in the library during their clinical years... which means, sure, they might get a handful of extra marks on the written exam (big whoop in my opinion), but they're really wasting their time and the hospital's time otherwise.

My philosophy when it comes to med, and everyone has their own take mind you, is that I'm more concerned about clinically-relevant knowledge and experience rather than marks. Some might say the two come hand-in-hand, and they do to an extent, but there are certainly ways to go about increasing your marks without increasing your clinically-relevant knowledge and experience. To me, a few marks here and there aren't worth all the extra studying, I'd rather spend that time (if I am to study) doing something I enjoy, just as what interests me, or helping out on the ward, or seeing patients.

Furthermore, on a realistic note, marks don't matter all that much? No one cares about them after you get an intern job (unless you did a stellar job and won a bunch of awards, but even then...). As for how much they effect your intern application - not as much as you'd expect. Plenty of other things come into play, such as having qualities references, a solid CV (research, extra-curricular, etc.), a nice cover letter, and strong interview performance. So even if you did pre-occupy yourself with marks, you might be letting yourself down in those other areas.

Shenz0r:
Yeah, it's impossible to learn everything. And not everything is going to be relevant for a doctor - it's not worth knowing everything that's involved in the replication of Hepatitis B, for example, but you need to understand how to manage patients, what complications might arise, how you would go around diagnosing it, etc. What IS important is that you take away what's clinically relevant, learn to not miss any red flags, recognise patterns, and try apply it in wards.

So far the MSTs we've had haven't been crazy specific (there are a few oddball questions now and then though...). There's a bit of application and understanding that's involved.

You'll also find that learning theory through books and lectures is boring af and you'll be itching to go onto the wards as soon as you can.

vox nihili:
Absolutely agree with pi and Shenz0r. It's impossible to get through everything and to understand everything.

With that said, it does take a bit of time to adapt to that. Personally, I'm still struggling with the fact that no matter how hard I try I won't be able to be across all the information, and that there'll still be quite a sizeable chunk of my cohort who out performs me. I think a lot of us are surviving first year knowing that the next three years will help us develop other aptitudes, not just our aptitude for cramming. I should probably qualify that by saying that PCP (principals of clinical practice) does give you somewhat of an opportunity to develop communication and examination skills, but even quite a lot of that still feels like rote learning info without actually fitting it into the broader scheme of things.

TL;DR: yes there's a lot and it does take a little bit to adapt the extra workload/the different environment

Russ:
A lot of the early knowledge you need to have, even if you never mastered it the first time round. It's easy to dismiss it as needlessly specific but be careful in avoiding it completely.

Your marks will be the single largest contributing factor to your internship application unless they've radically changed things, which can have implications for doing further HMO years there, so learning to the exam isn't inappropriate. No medical school really prepares you for the reality of the job and it's only practice that gets you there. Focusing on clinical skills and ward technique is commendable but it's not going to make a large difference since so much of what you do, you'll need to figure out as you go.

Clinical years are very different but they're still content intensive and you should still focus on the curriculum. You'll have fun regardless, you'll probably have a guaranteed job and you can figure the rest out along the way.

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