LANCASTER UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SOCIETY
Life at Medical School
First Year
First Year was a blast, made lots of awesome memories and amazing friends!
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How Much Clinical Time Do You Get?
Once a week you’ll attend a session called ‘clinical skills’ on a Tuesday or Thursday for around 2 hours. Within these 2 hours you are taught, well... clinical skills! These range from taking manual blood pressure to conducting a neurological examination and usually follow the topic of the PBL module that you are currently on. These sessions are extremely interesting, interactive and give real insight into the kind of things you’ll not only be doing on the wards in years 2-5 but the rest of your career.
How Much Free Time Do You Get?
The answer is short and sweet- LOADS! Everyone goes into medicine thinking it's non-stop with very little time for yourself... In reality, that’s not the case. In year one I had lots of time alongside my studies to join societies, socialise with my friends and do the sports I enjoy. There’s no denying that medicine is an extremely taxing subject to study however, I think the main thing is keeping on top of your work, doing that will maximise the amount of time you have to get out of the library and do the things you enjoy.
What is the Structure of the Year?
PBL is split up into 2 week modules, each one of these covers a system in the body (Respiratory, Cardiovascular etc). At the start of each of the modules, on Monday, you’ll attend the first PBL session. This is where you look at the scenario and generate Learning Objectives (LOs) for that module. The LOs you generate will be split up and fed back to the group on the following Monday and Friday. Alongside the PBL sessions, you will have one session of Clinical Skills as well as ‘CALC’ on the Tuesday and Thursday of each week. CALC; or Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre is a session where you explore the relevant anatomy to the module you are on under the guidance of Doctors/ Anatomists, these sessions are extremely useful. Throughout the module you will also have a variety of lectures exploring all of the curricular themes, guiding how much depth you must go into to fully complete each one of your LOs.
While this all may feel very new and overwhelming at first, fear not; as you progress through each module it gets easier, you’ll discover resources you like/ dislike and become an efficient learner!
Jos Kenward