The main clinical block was now over, meaning we were back in lectures. After having a summer away from it, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in again. There’s something about getting up, grabbing a coffee and spending time with your mates in a lecture on something that confuses you by the fifth slide.
The lectures from now until Christmas will involve the foundations that were taught from first year and help guide us into the symptom-based teaching of after Christmas.
In comparison to first year, we were taught about every system individually. Now, we are being introduced to more complex physiology, like the turnover of skin, and how this process can be disrupted and present clinically as a disease. This year is more disease-based than normal physiology.
Our labs contain more interesting practicals, such as understanding what flow cytometry is and how it can be used to work out which cells are in a sample to the metabolism of aspirin. This is definitely a more sciencey block which is quite nice after just finishing clinical placements and times on the wards.
In our clinical parts, we have been taught greater details on taking a well rounded history. For example, how to explore the different components of a drug history to make sure you don’t miss anything out. Like how people sometimes forget to mention their contraception drugs when giving the list of their current medications. Furthermore, we are completing system examinations on patients in the hospital and the GP after taking a history which is helping to marry together our findings!
Hello! Studying Medicine at Bristol University, I’ve been asked by students with an interest in Medicine too about how I got there, so have decided to put together this blog which outlines exactly how I spent Year 12 and Year 13 – and how you should too. I hope this can help you at all. I am also going to update this blog with my Med-experience, so you can follow my journey to becoming a doctor - please do "Follow by Email" (see right side of the page) to get updates every time I upload a post.