Surgical Careers Open Day.

On Saturday (26/02) I went to Liverpool Medical School to attend their Surgical Careers Open Day and I must say it had the most depressing start ever! We had an ENT surgeon do a brief introduction about being a surgeon and the mood of the entire room just shot down through the floor. Essentially his view was in order to become a surgeon you MUST do a BMedSci and get lots of publications. And even if you do those things you won't get into your surgical specialty. I understand surgery is quite competitive but we all attend the surgical open day because we are excited about it honestly there is a less harsher way of putting reality into context. Instead of scaring our pants off and being a black cloud...how about just introduce the steps and the possible downfalls that could happen along the way...instead of just hammering on about how difficult it is and that we can mess up our career if we don't show any sort of progress while doing a masters degree if we don't get into CST. Wayyyyy to start the morning off. Essentially from what I can tell the mood was grim.

We had talks from an ENT surgeon, paediatric surgeon, plastic surgeon, orthopaedic surgeon, and a transplant surgeon. Most interesting/well done presentation was done by the Orthopaedic surgeon as it was short and concise. It gave us a good overview of the career and what it involves. After the talk I talked to the Orthopaedic surgeon to ask him about his view on BMedSci and how recruiting works if you're an international student.

What I gather from our short conversation was that if you are not interested in doing a BMedSci do not force yourself into doing one. If you're interested - good do one! And there was a bit of a mention how some people are doing it just for the sake of getting brownie points for their application forms and what matters most is your pure interest in the specialty. He also mentioned about making your CV stand out. If you had to take all your friends' CV and compare it with yours - yours should stand out if you want to make it into surgery.

Now with international students it seems like we are not discriminated anymore for specialty selection. Once we have registered after foundation year (if that will even happen in the future) we will be placed on the same level as local students as we have gone through the UK medical education system. The tough part is just getting your Visa. I was pretty glad to find out that we will be treated like the local students as that evens the playing field a bit more. Shame nothing has really been released about the new immigration scheme as that will be the biggest obstacle.

Overall the careers day was alright. It wasn't anything special. Came home pretty much shattered due to the early wake up to catch the train to Liverpool. It was nice talking to the Orthopaedic surgeon though. :)

Summary of my 5 weeks at Medical School

Sorry for the long wait!

First I want to say good luck to all the 2010 medical applicants! Hopefully you'll be hearing from your universities soon!

So far medical school has been A LOT better than I thought it would be. I always hear that medical school is EXTREMELY busy and tough. I cannot confirm the tough bit...yet, but so far the work load has been pretty moderate. I have seem to already enjoy Surface Anatomy lectures and practical activities in the dissection room. I always get excited when I see either of these on my timetable. At the moment I have seem to found a new enemy: Biochemistry and Histology. Biochemistry because I felt like we went through it way too fast but I think we are going back to it later in the year to study it in more detail. I was told that the first eight weeks are still like module introduction, where we cover almost everything that we will be doing this year. Not too fond of histology, not because it is hard or anything, but this is where we have to do online practicals at home. I have been finding them quite annoying as it is quite a challenge to find the answers to the questions. Plus it takes a really long time to complete like what...ten questions? We are allotted two hours to do the histology practical so that kind of gives you an idea why I find histology slightly annoying.

Social wise I am loving it! I am glad I have made lots of friends who are very nice. We hang pretty often and we usually go have lunch in the union or something after our morning lectures. So far I have went to all the medic socials:

Freshers Foam Party
Medics Fancy Dress Pub Crawl

Yes there has only been two events for us medics BUT the two events were AMAZING. The MedSoc really put a lot of effort into these events to make sure we all have loads of fun. Plus who does not like a nice discount at the bars during these events. From time to time I do go out with some of my friends at night to go sit at a bar and play some games. Pretty fun. Great bonding time too.

So far I have learned to keep up with your lecture notes and do your recommended reading (especially before practicals such as dissection)!!! Every week I would type up all my handwritten notes and merge them with the lecture powerpoint that is always posted up on our med school website. I guess I just want to do these notes for the future as when it comes exam time I don't want to be trying to remember stuff I did in September. But yes do your recommended reading so you don't get lost! Feel really dumb at dissection when you don't even know what topic you're learning about for the day...so avoid it by reading!

I shall end this post as it is getting long...and boring...but I will try to update more often. Maybe sneak in a interview tips post...which I should have done quite awhile ago.