A journey into the mind of a medical student

Heyhey all blog readers (I don’t know how many of you there are but meh),

Apologies for the lack of updates in the last few months. I’ve just been busy with uni, personal things and what not. Hopefully this blog will be back up and running in a few weeks time in preparation for the coming uni year. Also I hope to have someone else help me contribute to the blog so we can get a perspective from different years at Auckland Uni!

Offers for the 2008 intake have been released on nDEVA so congrats to all those who have got offers! For those who are on the waitlist, don’t give up hope! there are several people in my class who have gotten in on the waitlist Finally for those who were unlucky to get a place, don’t give up hope! It’s very hard for the med school to select candidates because everyone is so intellectual and awesome. Try again after you have completed your degree! Life doesn’t end just because nDEVA shows you an ugly 4 letter word starting with D.

For the new peeps coming in, don’t forget freshers camp on 22nd-24th of February on Motutapu Island. It’s a great occasion where you get to meet all your new classmates (If I saw you at the interviews you would have got this spiel from me so put up with it :P). It is a weekend of drinking and getting freebies from sponsors. Also grassroots will once again put on the rural olympics which is an awesome afternoon where you get to be feral and get dirty and enjoy yourself in the awesome summer weather!

Anyways if you have any questions, do pop on over to MSO www.medstudentsonline.com and sign up and ask!

Have a Happy New Year!

~Lordgarlic

Ok so it seems I actually have people reading my random ranting *gasp how freaky* so I guess I’ll try answer some other bits and pieces about the application process here in Auckland. But first of all I have to make my obligatory med school ramble.

Currently we are in Week 4 of semester 2 and I seem to work as hard as if it was day 1 of the year, e.g. being a sloth. Now there are tests coming up in week 6 that I should really get round to studying for but I have the level of motivation similar to asking vegan to get eat steak. So these tests are worth tiny amounts 7% and 15% but unfortunately I have this horrible habit of setting myself a decent standard (in this case a B+ because I kinda like getting my level 4 scholarship money haha).

I was fortunate enough to be able to make a GP clinic visit in the 2nd week of semester. This is probably the most clinical we get in year 2 (that and clinical skills workshops. just had cardio one which was fun ). In this visit, we got to sit in on a general practice for an afternoon (in my case 2-630pm) and we got to see the doctor at work, using their wealth of knowledge and helping people out. It’s really amazing what you see in general practice because it definitely isn’t just colds colds colds and more colds. In fact, I didn’t even see a single cold the whole time I was there! I did get to see things such as freezing with liquid nitrogen, got to touch a few feet to compare circulation haha and got to feel important when people asked us for opinions when we knew nothing lol (we kindly just replied we aren’t qualified to reply and we have as much knowledge of medicine as a wombat flying an aeroplane does).

On another note, sometimes the teaching up at med school becomes very didactic and confusing. The most confusing subject by a long while is anatomy. Ok to some people, anatomy is their life and their existence. I really don’t see how people can enjoy a subject where everything is memorized. There are no concepts. I thrive of concepts sheesh. So twice a week I go through the same routine of being completely bamboozled in the lecture because our lecturer just points at bits of anatomy without explanation and very little clinical correlation. This is then followed by the anatomy lab where I play “Where’s the Artery” (ala, where’s wally style). Maybe it’s time to get the curriculum modernized or something haha.

Social events at the med school are generally quite interesting. Every event becomes a giant piss up and everyone is drunk, lost and vomiting everywhere. We like the intelligent engineers if there were such a thing! Anyways, the med revue is coming up next week and I think that all first year students should go (*hint* great if you can ramble on about how cool the med revue was in your interview :p shows that you aren’t a block of wood with no social life who tries to get into med school). Tickets are on sale at the maidment! (thats the funky looking theatre building across the road from the city campus library.

Ok back to the first years admissions etc etc. 142 is your most important paper this semester. DRILL IT INTO YOUR HEAD. 142 is the most important paper this semester. Unfortunately for you guys, colin and peter made 142 a bit too easy last year with 15% or so getting A+ as a final grade. I would imagine it would be harder this year! If you are unsure of things in 142, ask friends, ask lecturers, ask your tortora and derrickson. Don’t just blindly say “who cares?” because getting in seems rather cut-throat this year. (yes I have heard stories of people stealing course guides, destroying course guides, ripping notes etc.)

Secondly, complete your MH03 and apply on ndeva on time. Last thing you want is to forget to apply. That would just be plain sad. On your MH03 be careful what your write. Ask yourself, can you talk about an item for several minutes because some interviewers love grilling people on one silly little item. I’ll post more about interviews closer to november.

so I passed semester 1 Woot Woot. Now it’s onto semester 2 and I think i’m used to the med school system by now. So, I’m expecting a torrent of work considering we have 3 organ systems to cover in the next 4 months: cardiovascular, respiratory and genitourinary.

In other med school news it seems that there will be a pub crawl first week back and I’m contemplating whether or not to go. Usually it ends up as a mess because most people are drunk and lots of medcestuous (is that even a word :p?) events occur between the piles of vomit and empty bottles. Though there is one group on campus that drinks more than the meddies and they are the engineers. Those blokes (well mostly blokes and maybe some blokey women) drink as if they were going to die tomorrow and was to fall into a coma before hand. How crazy!

During this last week, I’ve been tortured at Maori Health Week. What is it you ask? well, it’s basically a week where they drill into you how we should put Maori first, and how white privilege and institutionalized racism rule our country. Some of the methods they propose is giving bonus points to Maori individuals so they have priority on surgical waiting lists. Sometimes you query these methods because aren’t surgeries based on need? What if a white man has a greater “need” but is usurped on the list by someone because of their ethnicity? I mean, it is true that Maori do suffer poorer health outcomes (but significantly better than indigenous australians who have a life expectancy 20 years less than their white counterparts. In NZ the difference is no more than ~10 years I believe *need to pull figures out from text sometime*) but does screwing over other people help? Maybe it’s time that we lobby our government to actually increase health funding instead of wasting it on silly little things. God forbid, they waste several months debating whether or not parents can smack their children. We as taxpayers want IMPORTANT things done considering htey are pocketing 90k-150k NZD per year in salary.

Anyways, back to this Maori Health Week. We had to make posters outlining a health problem and that was very cool and useful. The language lessons on the other hand were abysmal. The tutors themselves didn’t know what they were doing. One was playing a PSP while the other was trying to “teach”. Come on! we aren’t blind ya know ~_~; To make the problems worse, they had absolutely no idea how on earth to teach a language. You don’t start teaching people complicated sentences when they don’t know:

1) your blimmin alphabet

2) any words in your language aside from “hello”

3) any pronunciation at all

no wonder why no one learnt anything in those lessons. I do respect that these people are trainee teachers, but if they are being released on our nations children, I’d hate to imagine what the next generation is like.

Today’s newspaper also had an interesting article about junior doctors and locum work. The district health board chief “kindly” stated “Generation Y doesn’t want to work 65 hours a week for the rest of their lives any more. Generation Y - I gently suggest this - is more selfish rather than selfless.” This seems to be a load of bollocks. The district health board is trying to wring junior doctor’s necks off and try to get the most ours out of them for as little money as possible. Well, we aren’t the baby boomers or even generation X anymore, times are evolving and contrary to popular belief, most of us was families and a good family life, not any of this 70 hours a week and not seeing my kids rubbish they had in their generation. Also, 20 years old, medical school fees were very low at about 700 dollars per annum. Now its 11000 per annum and we graduate with a whopping 65k debt. Why wouldn’t we work locum work that pays $65/hour compared to salaried work at $22/hour. Any 8 year old could do the maths and tell me what is better.

Junior doctors are people, not drones. They will have a mortgage, a family to raise, insurance to pay, taxes to pay and also a desire to have holidays. None of this is easily achievable on $22/hour. Maybe we should all go be plumbers and earn $65-80/hour for call outs then. When the country is short on doctors you work on retention and not pissing off the new generation who can flee the country.

What does everyone else think?

reference article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=204&objectid=10451498

Well, it’s that time of the year again when exams come chasing us innocent students with whips and beating sticks. Ok, so I’m being over dramatic here, but unfortunately I seems to be like that sometimes haha. Unlike other courses in the university where you can just repeat a paper next semester or next year, failing a paper in med school has disastrous consequences. Failing 1 paper means you have to redo it over summer, and if you fail 2, you have to repeat the whole year wasting another $11500. Sometimes it makes you think if they want you to fail so they can get more $$ haha.

Now I believe is also the time the first years are having there exams and if any first years read this (I have no idea how you got here to start off with haha), then best of luck for your exams and I’ll hopefully see some of you next year.

First exam is on monday so I better go study and hopefully not fail it eh? Now that I don’t have lectures, there really isn’t much to rant about aside from the rusty all blacks against the French. It almost is like two horrible teams facing each other even though the first test score says otherwise. Now what I don’t get is why people would pay $50 to go to eden park to sit in the terraces to watch that game AND spend god knows how much on beer when they could be in a pub with all their friends and getting much larger volumes of booze for the same price. The atmosphere at the game wasn’t even that good to be honest.

Anyways, time to get back to work. Until next time ~

So I just discovered my blog has been completely overrun by spammed comments in the time that I have been ignoring it. I think it is trying to tell me to update more frequently haha.  Unfortunately because of the hectic schedule in 2nd year I barely get enough time to enjoy myself these days. Maybe 2nd semester will be nicer haha.

By now I’m rolling into the business end of semester with exams creeping up on me. This unfortunately means a truckload of cramming telephone book thick anatomy textbooks which will probably drive me mad by the end of all of it. Having said that, I’ve made myself a study timetable *gasp* and I’m trying to stick by it and so far it seems to be working haha.

Don’t know if any first years are reading this at all, but don’t be too hung up on your exam marks in semester 1. The interview is still by far the most important component of selection here at Auckland (compared to otago where hermits study medicine).

Socially we have had uhhh a cocktail party at a scungy club. Being surrounded by drunk people all night is always entertaining and by now I’m used to it. There are people who don’t drink but seem to be as crazy as the ones that do (I’m sure some of you will figure out who I’m talking about here). But all in all it was a great night and I’m really glad I went. On another note, city won the soccer in the country v city sports series yay. Only league left to go and obviously I won’t play because I’m a munchkin haha.

Anyways 2 weeks of lectures to go and i’ll try update more often haha

so, any of your meddies or wannabe meddies play any sport?

Sport is a wonderful way to relieve stress and escape from the nasty aspects of studying medicine. Currently I’m playing indoor netball and badminton and loving it.

2 games of indoor netball tonight (covered for another team which was short on players in the 2nd game) so now i’m tired and still have tons of vitamins to study for the digestive system.

So the question i’m posing is, What sports or social activities do you take part in out of medicine ^^?

ok so i’ve been VERY slack at this updating business.

I’m currently in the process of being crushed by my tests which are on the 23rd of April and 4th of May. We have musculo test on 23rd and anatomy isn’t very friendly to me. Origins and insertions drive me mad and it is really getting to the point that I’m starting to care less and less. The material is interesting and all, swotting for a test is not. Especially since our lousy tests loves asking us to write essays on little bit of the body (the thumb for example ~_~) or making us draw cross sections. Frankly with my artistic ability, half my cross sections end up like a pot of hodgepodge and looks nothing like what it should be argh.

Nothing interesting has been happening with the medsoc lately either so yeah.

In other news, the holidays have allowed me to catch up with some non-med friends and we ended up having a poker night where I won money *gasp*, considering I didn’t know how to play at the start of the evening, I think I did quite well hehe.  Also been playing nerdy board games like settlers of catan with some friends (engineers to be precise haha).

So, everything is rolling by, the first year students finished their important tests and once results come out there might be some more sabotaging, thieving of books, grafitti on notes and other malicious actions to prevent the other person making it into med-2 haha. Ah the good ol’ days. Sheesh my year wasn’t THAT nasty hahahaha

with that, adieu~

so, I really should blog more often

I had to most interesting lecture today for the digestive system. So, our anatomist lecture was one of the most interesting people in the med school. Today’s lecture was supposed to be on the development of the guy from the embryo, but I don’t seem to remember too much of it (dear me). It seems, the only thing that is still in my mind today (curse stupid 8am lectures) is that the stomach… turns and tilts…. turns and tilts…. from its embryonic position of dorsal/ventral to its mature form which sits crescent shaped in our bodies.

In other news from today, we watched 2 dutch home birth videos. Now, after watching those videos and being temporarily traumatized, I’m strangely glad I’m a guy.

What is in store this week. Well, I’ve already done 1 anatomy dissection lab this week where we looked at the knee joint. Tomorrow I think we are looking at the posterior compartment of the lower leg and it seems we have nearly finished the leg all together. Time really flies doesn’t it? 4th week into university already eep.

Once you reach second year, the atmosphere between students seems to have gotten so much better. This is probably because in year 1, everyone is your competitor, trying to possibly take your place in the med school haha.

I don’t know if there are any first years reading this, but if there are, you guys should RELAX, enjoy your free time and try not to make too many enemies because if you get in and they do as well, it won’t be fun.

I wonder what I should blog about next update. Anyone want to know anything in particular about auckland?

You guys will have to bear with me because this next post is going to be really long since there are quite a few things that I want to cover. As a result, I will break this entry up into 3 different portions

Introduction

I should probably introduce myself before I write anymore in this blog. For those who don’t know me, I’m on MSO as lordgarlic and I’ll remain anonymous in real life :D. I’m currently a 2nd year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery student at the University of Auckland. In my year 13 (AUS year 12), I applied to universities in Australia and had interviews but only to find out I failed to get into Monash. I received offers to Newcastle and UNSW, but due to complications with my results being provisional (stupid british examination system doesn’t give finalized results till april), I was rendered ineligible for any places which I would have qualified for.

Therefore, in 2006 I started the overlapping year 1 program in Biomedical Science to try get into medicine year 2 at Auckland. For those who are curious, this is the only way into medicine at the University of Auckland. Also during 2006 I applied to UWA, UMelb, UNCLE and UNSW and received offers for CSP UWA, CSP UMelb and DFEE UNSW. (for the curious statisticians, my year 1 GPA was 7.0 [8.675 in UoA/8.750 core 4 UoA] and UMAT was 216) .

So, if you are at all curious in the application process at any of the above universities for non standards and/or standards give me a PM on MSO.

Week 3 in general

Whats in store this week in MBChB-2 you ask. This week we once again have 2 dissections, piles of lectures and another ethics workshop (joy!! *sarcasm ~_~*). We are definitely moving at a rapid pace in all the papers aside from principles of medicine which we have yet to have a formal lecture for haha (first one is tomorrow it seems).

In the dissection front, we have so far had 4 dissection labs (and 1 more tomorrow yay) and we have covered:

The pectoralis muscles in the chest/Anterior and Lateral Compartments of the Thigh/Posterior compartment of the Thigh and the Gluteal Region/The Hip and Pelvis area concentrating on the hip joint

tomorrow we are doing the anterior side of the lower leg along with the foot. We are progressing very fast!

The other thing that seems to be the bane of my existence at med school is biochemistry. We have the most awful biochem lecturer teaching us stuff about vitamins. I mean if you think about it, future patients really don’t care too much about how vitamin B12 and N5N10 tetrahydrofolate help make UTDP in your body to make DNA. I so wish we had teaching from a nutritionist for these kinds of lectures. But despite all this bagging of the digestive system course, we have a GP give a lecture today on pernicious anaemia which was very interesting since I could actually make sense of SOME of the material we have been taught about B12 (I definitely prefer to know what kind of diagnosis you can get from this sort of thing etc.). Incidentally, I once did a specialty aptitude test that mentioned I would be suited for gastroenterology (yay poos!).

More about the course will come as I have more lectures etc

The Child and Family Study

The child and family study is a very important part of the phase 1 (year 2/3) curriculum in the MBChB here. If you don’t complete the study, you cannot proceed to phase 2.

The study works something like this (I’m starting in soon). We are allocated a pregnant mother at the start of year 2 and we are supposed to follow the child for the following 2 years. During this period, we are to document the child’s physical, social and mental development. Also, we are to look into the babies social and physical environment during this period and see if we can make any correlations and associations

I’m really looking forward to this because it will also give me an insight into raising children, what it involves etc. (I’m surely a cute cuddly baby can cause turmoil despite melting my heart).

In terms of preparations, we have been given lectures on the development of neonates from birth till childhood. I find some of the psychology aspects of the material extremely interesting. Maybe it’s because I found my educational psychology general education paper really interesting last year haha.

I also believe the University of Adelaide runs a similar study to this. Can someone clarify this?

so, I don’t know if there are many NZ students on MSO but I think it would make a great post just to briefly go over the course in general here at Auckland and a sample of what a week in MBChB-2 is like.

The course at Auckland is split into 4 separate domains:

Acquisition and application of medical knowledge

Professional, Clinical and research skills

Hauora Maori (akin to indigenous health in AUS)

Population Health and Primary Health Care (Auckland has a massive Population Health department )

So, in year 2, students do 8 papers (or some call it courses). Each individual course covers the 4 domains, or at least tries to cover 3 if a 4th is not applicable. (e.g. in the Musculoskeletal System course, the Hauora Maori domain is not covered because there doesn’t seem to be a big issue with Maori health in the musculoskeletal system aspects).

The 8 papers covered in year 2 therefore are:

Semester 1: Musculoskeletal System, Digestive system, Professional Development (which is like ethics, comm. skills, psychology, child development etc), and part I of Principles of Medicine (which is a lot of pathology, pharmacology and other bits and pieces)

Semester 2: Cardiovascular System, Respiratory System, Genitourinary System and Part II of Principles of medicine.

The course here has had major overhauls in the last 10 years and as such, the systems papers are integrated it terms of anatomy, clinical scenarios, pathology, histology etc. It is not longer sorted into ONE anatomy paper and ONE physiology paper. This brings a new approach to learning and it really is great to learn about clinical aspects as you go through anatomy to get a better understanding (plus its more interesting haha).

One thing unique to us here in Auckland is that we don’t have PBL (problem based learning). For those who are unaware, PBL has been rapidly developing in Australia over the last 10 or so years and involves being presented with scenarios each week and working through them as a group, learning the anatomy, pathology, clinical management behind it as a group. Why Auckland hasn’t adapted this approach I’m not sure. But our slightly more traditional approach still works and I enjoy it.

Also, we get 4 hours of cadaver dissections each week which is really awesome for reinforcing the musculoskeletal system anatomy lectures. The dissection process allows you to spatially orientate yourself with the muscles and also see other structures along the way like the adipose tissue, the different nerves (e.g. sciatic nerve), vessels (e.g. great saphenous vein).

So, enough of me rambling on about my course, lets present my timetable for next week haha. Its not exactly the friendliest timetables but getting 2 half days is a nice thing

Monday: 8-9 (DS), 9-10 (MSS), 1030-1230 cadaver dissection, 1230-1 radiology tutorial, 2-5 digestive system lab

Tuesday: 8-9 (DS clinical session which i dunno what it is), 12-1 (DS)

Wednesday: 8-9 (POM), 10-11 (POM), 2-3 (MSS), 330-5 cadaver dissection

Thursday: 8-9 (MSS), 10-11 (child and Family Study (more about this next blog update), 11-12 (C & FS workshop), 12-1 (PD), 2-4 (PD workshop)

Friday: 8-9 (PD), 9-10 (MSS), 1030-12 (MSS microanatomy workshop), 12-1 (POM)

for those who are lost, MSS is musculoskeletal, DS is digestive system, PD is prof. development and POM is priniciples of medicine

anyways, comments are always appreciated

~adios from Auckland