UTAS Medicine

A few weeks ago we had a Clinical Skills Night.

We rocked up to the hospital and signed up for a range of activities to practice: venepuncture, wound care, intubation and suturing. I did everything except intubation (you could only pick three).

The venepuncture was great, we got to do it on our friends. I have the vacutainer with my friend Liz’s blood in it in my room. Suturing was really good too, we did it on pig trotters (very similar to human skin). It’s so much harder than it looks! Wound care was a bit like a lecture and it went over my head because they talked about a lot of different brands of dressings and I really had no idea about any of them.

Ciao for now!

I thought I’d tell you a bit about the long-term parts of the course, in case you wanted to know.

I told you before how we now have an integrated curriculum, where we learn all the basic sciences (anat, phys, pharm, path etc.) at the same time? Well we do that for a different system or set of systems every semester for the first two years. This is how it goes:

Year 1:
Semester 1: Integumentary system (skin)
Semester 2: Musculoskeletal system
Year 2:
Semester 1: Cardiovascular system and respiratory system
Semester 2: Digestive system, renal system and reproductive system

Other systems (like the endocrine system) are encompassed within the other systems. Year 3 is known as the transition year, where we consolidate our basic sciences learning into a wholly clinically-led curriculum.

Years 4 and 5 are a series of clinical rotations, where we spend a year each at two of the following hospitals: Royal Hobart, Launceston General, and the Rural Clinical School in Burnie. I’m planning on going to the Rural Clinical School in Burnie for Year 4 (not because I want to go into Rural Medicine, more so because the class sizes are smaller and there is more opportunity for a hands-on medical education), and the Launceston General Hospital (the reason being that we have our Year 3 mainly in the Royal Hobart Hospital, so I want a go at all three of the major Tasmanian hospitals).

Something we start next Semester is the Kids and Families Programs. We are paired with another student and allocated a family somewhere around Hobart who is about to have a baby. Then we visit them a couple of times a semester to get a hands-on view of their baby’s development, and we have an opportunity to learn about the dynamics of a family while they are bringing up a child. This is a major part of Theme 3.

Hope this is informative for some of you. Ask any questions by making a comment.

Hey everybody, sorry it’s been so long since we have posted.

I wanted to write a post about what the new course is like. Michelle has posted on this a bit already, but the coursework for the semester is over now (we’ve just got review sessions next week, then SWOT-VAC, then exams). At this stage, I can tell you that Semester 1 of Year 1 is relatively light-on. Between 15-20 contact hours is pretty much the average.

To put this into context, in the Bachelor of Medical Research (which as I mentioned before, is the same as the first year as the old Medicine course) we had the following a week:

3 Lectures per subject x 4 subjects = 12
1 3h practical per subject x 4 subjects = 12
1 tutorial per subject x 4 subjects = 4

So that makes around 24 hours contact time per week. This was manageable and we got used to it. Three days a week were 8am starts so at least we were up and about, getting stuff done, ya know.

The MBBS this semester has a very weird timetable. None of it is set in concrete. Each Thursday they release the timetable for the following week, in a document called “Weekly Detail”. The Weekly Detail consists of:

- The week’s case: usually correlating somehow to the material being covered in the week.
- The timetable
- Case questions (explored in a tutorial on Monday and answered in a tutorial on Friday)
- Case tasks

The whole cohort is divided up into groups, called CBL (Case-Based Learning) Groups. Our CBL groups meet with a tutor (who is always a General Practitioner) every Monday and Friday. On Monday we introduce the case together, discuss the material that needs to be learned, and start to plan the Case Tasks. There is a Case Task for each CBL group each week.

We do one whopping integrated subject per semester (instead of the normal four), but in terms of the delivery and assessment of material, it is divided up into 5 Themes.

Theme 1: Human Health and Disease (all the anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology and other science topics)
Theme 2: Communication and Collaboration (dealing with patients, being effective in a non-scientific situation, and all our clinical work like physical examinations and clinical skills)
Theme 3: Community Health and Disease (public health, community health, epidemiology)
Theme 4: Personal and Professional Development (self-reflective practice, ethics)
Theme 5: Integration (education and assessment that ties Themes 1-4 together)

So on a Monday, we typically have CBL tutes from 9-12 depending on which group you are in. Then at 12 we usually have a Theme 1 lecture, maybe on the histology of the integumentary system or something, and then a Theme 4 seminar on the ethics of, say, funding for disability services, or the analysis of the concept of dignity, then often a Theme 3 lecture on what Public Health is.

Tuesday and Wednesday are usually lots of lectures and seminars. Thursday is prac day. We have a Theme 2 seminar/practical each week where we discuss, explore and develop communication skills. The second prac is lab work. This semester we did some histology labs and some pathology labs, and one microbiology lab.

Friday is Case Report day. We have another tutorial in the morning in our CBL groups with a GP. And then we present out Case tasks, usually in the form of a powerpoint presentation, to the rest of the class.

This semester we covered the following very general Theme 1 topics:
1. Very very general and basic anatomy (we start gross anatomy hardcore next semester)
2. Cell biology
3. Basic histology of the four adult tissues, and of the integumentary system
4. Introduction to pharmacology
5. Inflammation, regeneration and repair of tissue
6. Neoplasia
7. Biochemistry - nutrition and glucose metabolism, and a DNA component

Assessment has been light. We have had two multiple choice question tests (do not be fooled, med schools know how to make MCQs hard; I usually perform better in short or long answer exams than in MCQs); two “reflective pieces” (where we are given a general medical ethical topic and take a reflective practice approach to writing a piece on it), and a formative practical exam. The majority of our assessment this semester will be external (examinations).

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Leave a comment if you want me to explain anything else. Ciao for now!