Bored MED V Chiming in.

[HughMungus]

Sup.

Who am I?
Final year undergrad medical student at Monash Uni.

What Do I Study?
B.Med.Sci & M.D.

What do I want to do when I grow up?
Neurosurgery

Where am I interning Next year?
Monash Health --> fuq the elitism of the Big 4.

What is my Z score?
4+

What are my goals for 2020?
Getting Med done and dusted
Not die of COVID-19 --> been swabbed 5 times already this year ffs.
Final years have to continue to go to Placements at hospitals and half of my unit's patients are in COVID-19 Wards.

What are my goals for next year?
Start a masters program --> probs an MPH or MSurg.
Be a bomb Intern

Came back on here for nostalgia sake and thought why not write about how Uni life has been for me thus far.

Back in my day, when everything was in black and white, I too was a keen VCE kid who was unaware of the tough demands of adulthood and Uni life. I was young and I was dumb and thought I would dedicate my life to the study of the human body and trying to understand how it works. Spoiler alert - reading all the books in med only makes it worse.

Y1 MBBS(Hons)
The year was pretty much a blur iirc. They eased us into the course with the first semester being really easy to digest stuff and most medical students and their 99 ATAR brains would easily chow down.
Semester 2 became harder with the introduction of Anatomy and the bi-weekly dissections --> I still remember the 'oh so sweet' smell of Formaldehyde on my lab coat and subsequently my car.
Everyone was bitching about Neurophysiology and neuroanatomy --> I thought it was pretty chill.
Got HDs all year

Year 2 MBBS(Hons)
Even more dissections and study became a lot more hard because everyone wanted to do well in the EOY exams and VIA
Monash decided to switch us to the New MD program halfway through the year.
EOY exams were hard but if you actually studied, you'd be gucci.
Final year of anatomy dissections

Year 3 BMedSci/MD
Welcome to the life of a 'RealTM' doctor.
I was at MMC so a fairly large group of students. Still close to the 27 Rainforest for the cheeky study sesh. #ForeverAlone
multiple passive aggressive sindes from consultants who 'had to do 3 years of research to get their MD' and they were just 'handing it away to idiots who cannot tell a JVP from a carotid pulse'
Neurosurg was fun loved assisting in theatre.
I think I love surgery
First introduced to the postgrads --> they keep to their own.
Undergrad vs postgrad tribalism pretty obvious

Year 4 BmedSci/MD
Started on Psych --> crazy lady on the psych ward kept calling me pretty <3. Self Esteem/10
Had to go to Casey hospital for psych -->
Rotation 2 was O&G -- > NEVER AGAIN!!!!
Babies are ugly when they are born --> fact
Was put off from sex after birth suite shifts for a good 3 months
Paeds was cool. Saw a few kids with interesting conditions --> Cystic fibrosis exists in the real world :O
GP was meh, not for me

Year 5 BmedSci/MD
Rewarded myself with a cruise in December 2019 for getting y4 over and done with --> y5 is unpaid internship.
Came back to the bushfires
Then COVID happened and people hated cruises all of a sudden. Thank god for I already came back. This could have been horrid.
Y5 placements resume as per normal
Got swabbed 5 times for COVID --> made my eyes water so much the pain was horrid.
All the rotations went by like a blur.
Not allowed in theatres because of COVID risk
Am on cardiology now and can finally read ECGs
Still want to be a surgeon

This is it thus far... I'll post updates if I have time but yeah... what a dumb year.

[K888]

Nice to see you back on AN! How are you feeling about being let loose as an intern next year?
Will maybe see you if I get a job at Monash Health haha.

[HughMungus]

Nice to see you back on AN! How are you feeling about being let loose as an intern next year?
Will maybe see you if I get a job at Monash Health haha.

I think I'm ready. Have had tons of Exp over the last 3 years so am raring to go. Also I want to actually be paid to do discharge summaries and paperwork for a change.

Monash health is big tho. You could be anywhere, but I'll keep an eye out

[justaloser]

Excited to read about whatever you post here. As a med jaffy I don't hear much about the clinical years apart from being pimped and consultants being dicks. Hear good things about rural placements though (maybe that's because they have a whole program to promote it).

How were your clinical years compared to pre-clin? What are clinical med students' opinions of preclin?

[Lear]

'...and they were just 'handing it away to idiots who cannot tell a JVP from a carotid pulse'

The JVP doesn't exist and you won't convince me otherwise. It's a massive conspiracy to put down medical students .

In all seriousness, looking forward to reading your responses here.

Question from me - I've sometimes found the isolated physiology taught to us in preclin jarring when it doesn't seem to have clear correlation to conditions. Just wondering how the substance of education changes in clinical years. I know you have a matrix and learn conditions and such, but is there still those random pieces you're meant to learn 'just because'?

[HughMungus]

Excited to read about whatever you post here. As a med jaffy I don't hear much about the clinical years apart from being pimped and consultants being dicks. Hear good things about rural placements though (maybe that's because they have a whole program to promote it).

How were your clinical years compared to pre-clin? What are clinical med students' opinions of preclin?

Getting quizzed on the ward rounds by consultants is a polarising topic IMO, it depends on your personality and how you learn. Personally I enjoyed getting quizzed because I am an interactive learner and who better to teach you stuff than a consultant. I think on a few occasions they were trying to make fun of me but I passed their "shit test" which made them respect me more and subsequent quizzes were more educational. My personal advice would be to have a go at answering the question to the best of your ability, you'd be surprised how everything is basically interlinked and the preclin stuff will make sense. If you know physiology well, you'll do well on medical wards, if you know anatomy and pathology well, you'll do well on surgical wards.
Every med student is different, some are more up their ass than others. People like me quite like the junior med students because it allows us to bounce medical science ideas off them (as you freshly learnt it) and then contextualise it in the clinical setting. Some of my colleagues are a little more snobby and will try to enforce hierarchy where you're the dumb one. Don't take it to heart and please don't become like them in the future.

The JVP doesn't exist and you won't convince me otherwise. It's a massive conspiracy to put down medical students .

In all seriousness, looking forward to reading your responses here.

Question from me - I've sometimes found the isolated physiology taught to us in preclin jarring when it doesn't seem to have clear correlation to conditions. Just wondering how the substance of education changes in clinical years. I know you have a matrix and learn conditions and such, but is there still those random pieces you're meant to learn 'just because'?

My cardiology rotation has enlightened me to the mystical ways of the JVP. Wait your turn sweet child as soon you will also see the light. Seriously tho, it's so cool when you get it. Esp on the heart failure patients where you will see it all the way up to their jaw.

I am an extremely strong advocate of mastering the medical sciences, physiology included. I do not believe they are useless as some may tell you for clinical practice. For example you got a patient with hyperkalemia on the wards and you notice they are on an ACE inhibitor. Because you paid attention in pre-clin, you would know that ACEi inhibits ACE (duhh) thus affects RAAS which means you are excreting less K in the kidneys as less Aldosterone is being released due to reduced ATII. So you would know that one of the things you can do to treat is stop the Ace inhibitor, all from first principles. Also these things comes up multiple times in postgraduate training where a lot of doctors have to relearn anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology e.t.c. for their college exams. Might as well have a good idea from the start and look less clueless on rounds .
The entirety of medicine is 'random peices you learn because' so be prepared for that. If you are not learning some new random factoid everyday, you are not paying enough attention. I learnt today that a mechanical mitral valve can clot and when it does, it loses its characteristic click on Auscultation and a clotted mechanical mitral valve is BAD --> immediate Tissue plasminogen activator infusion and lo and behold the click is back :O <mindblown>

In the clinical years, your learning will shit from the structured tutes and lectures to more independent learning. You will still have lectures and tutes but you will be expected to work on your own matrix and juggle your clinical placements at the same time. It's not as bad as it sounds trust me

If an idiot like me can do it, so can you