Vox Nihili, Vox Dei—VN's Medicine Journey Journal

[vox nihili]

Hey there!

I'm Vox Nihili, one of the NatMods here at AN and a student currently in their fifth (FIFTH!!!!) year of Uni. I've already got a degree under my belt (Biomedicine) and am now studying medicine at UniMelb.

Over my time at Uni, I've been lucky enough to do a lot of great things. Some of that includes:

-editing UniMelb Adventures
-a free trip to Canberra this year
-lecturing at SWOT
-teaching with VCESS
-debating in second year (and then debating coaching)
-writing for Farrago
-mentoring with UMSU

This journal is going to talk about my experiences with some of these things and more Really keen to make this a little bit interactive, so if you have any questions or comments fire away!

[Quantum44]

Hello there,

I'm curious as to why you chose the name 'vox nihili'. If I'm not mistaken it is Latin for 'voice of nothing', and as a student of Latin this interests me (not that you have to be familiar with Latin to be aware of the common phrases).

I'm also interested to hear how you are finding medicine at UniMelb as not many AN members are into their post-graduate studies.

Looking forward to hearing more from you!

[vox nihili]

Hello there,

I'm curious as to why you chose the name 'vox nihili'. If I'm not mistaken it is Latin for 'voice of nothing', and as a student of Latin this interests me (not that you have to be familiar with Latin to be aware of the common phrases).

I'm also interested to hear how you are finding medicine at UniMelb as not many AN members are into their post-graduate studies.

Looking forward to hearing more from you!

Hey mate!

Will clear up the Latin now. I'll admit that I had a bit of a Google when I wanted to change things up. Vox nihili literally means voice of nothing, but in English we use it to refer to an ambiguous/meaningless phrase, which is basically what a username is
Obviously the title of this blog is play on words, taking from the phrase "vox populi, vox dei" meaning the voice of the people is the voice of god.
I never had the opportunity to study Latin at school or uni unfortunately, although I would have liked to! In the end I managed Ancient Greek instead, which was a full on experience. As I remember, the lecturer was actually a doctor who had worked on understanding ancient texts concerning medicine. The Ancient Greeks were probably the first to practice medicine somewhat similarly to how we practice it today. Certainly, a lot of the ethical basis of medicine derives from Greek philosophy, hence the Hippocratic oath. Galen was another Greek philosopher who had a big impact on medicine. His text of pharmacology was basically the Rang & Dale of the time and for more than 1000 years afterwards.

[Absurdo]

Hi there,
How hard was it exactly to get into medicine? Did doing a biomed degree makes it any easier?
Looking forward to hearing more

[sweetiepi]

Galen was another Greek philosopher who had a big impact on medicine. His text of pharmacology was basically the Rang & Dale of the time and for more than 1000 years afterwards.

Gotta love Rang and Dale!

What's your main interest in medicine currently?

[vox nihili]

Had a practice exam for the end of the year yesterday. Was better than I expected. To be honest, I had expected some of the questions to be a bit unreasonable, but even though there was still a lot there that I didn't know, it seemed reasonable that we could have been expected to know it.

The clinical years in many respects are a lot more loose, so what we're expected to know and what we aren't expected to know isn't hugely clear. That can be a source of enormous frustration and arguably isn't particularly fair (especially seeing as Victoria is the only state left that actually worries about marks pretty much), but we manage

Hi there,
How hard was it exactly to get into medicine? Did doing a biomed degree makes it any easier?
Looking forward to hearing more

It's hard. That said, it's probably not quite as hard as some people would have you believe.

Doing biomed doesn't make it easier to get into med per se, though being in a degree full of people who want to do med is definitely motivating.

Gotta love Rang and Dale!

What's your main interest in medicine currently?

Hahah I'm so glad there was someone who enjoyed the Rang and Dale reference :p


To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. If I had to pick a speciality tomorrow I'd pick neuro, but with that said that's barely a strong preference. All I know is that in my future I want to teach and I also want to work on the "bigger picture" things. Whether that's policy or whatnot, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think I'll be content without getting out there and working on something.

At the moment that something that I'm really interested in is how we gather and apply evidence in medicine, but whether that changes I don't know

[vox nihili]

Not a lot been going on the last couple of weeks.

Surgery Rotation

So that started. Haven't had the chance to go to theatre yet. Only went on my first wardround today (had to wake up before 5am lel). I'm starting to really enjoy the way surgery is approached, particularly the way it's taught. It seems to be a lot more practical than some of the other specialities. Unfortunately, I don't really have the patience, dexterity or love of mornings to be a surgeon.

UTAs

For the most part, we kind of have to learn clinical examination (i.e. stethoscopes and shit) by ourselves. This is sometimes a little challenging, but typically works pretty well.

Some examinations, however, are deliberately taught. These tend to be the sensitive examinations: think breasts and genitals. Though we do have the opportunity to hone our skills with patients, before we do that, some people come to visit us at the hospital and go through how to do the exam. We then get to have a go at the exam ourselves.

These sessions are pretty confronting, but they're also really useful. The people who come in are absolute guns. Firstly, for allowing us to practise on them, but also because they're just so lovely about teaching us too—no judgment at all.

Practice Exam

As mentioned in the last post, we had a practice exam the other week. We only really got the results of the MCQ section. The average was really low, which was mildly concerning; however, I was above this so I think I have a little less to worry about.

I don't feel like I've worked nearly as hard this year as I did last and could certainly have approached the clinical environment better. At this point, I think I'm just ready for holidays and to give things a better crack next year.

[vox nihili]

Went to my first surgery today (yes it's late in the year, leave me alone). I was with the anaesthetic team rather than the surgeons. We only had the one surgery this afternoon, after the first was cancelled. In fact, it was cancelled really late, which sort of threw the shit well and truly into the fan but that's a story for another time. The surgery we did get to was a fairly simple one...it was essentially a repair to a fistula. They got rid of it because it was starting to cause the patient a bit of trouble.

Things I learned:

-scrubs are comfy
-surgery involves a lot of standing around doing not much
-anaethetists really are good at Sudoku

[K888]

-anaethetists really are good at Sudoku

What about crosswords?

Exciting about the surgery! Is this a field you're finding interesting? Like, something you'd think "yeah, this would be cool to do", or more a "interesting, but doesn't quite tickle my fancy"?

Are you just on a general surgery rotation, or also seeing orthopaedics, etc.?

[vox nihili]

Anaesthetic week ended up great. Everyone I was placed with was absolutely lovely and were really keen to get me involved. They gave me opportunities to bag-mask a patient who had obstructed and, later in the week, I was fortunate enough to have patients willing to let me intubate them. I managed to do that successfully first try, which really was a nice confidence boost particularly at this time of the year!

The following Monday I had to have a fill-in session that I had missed on anaesthetics, which ended up great too. I finished my cannula assessment and ended up placed with a consultant who was a Richmond supporter, too. It was only two days after our grand final win, so we spent most of the happy as Larry chatting about the footy!

What about crosswords?

Exciting about the surgery! Is this a field you're finding interesting? Like, something you'd think "yeah, this would be cool to do", or more a "interesting, but doesn't quite tickle my fancy"?

Are you just on a general surgery rotation, or also seeing orthopaedics, etc.?

Sorry I missed this!

No crosswords...there was definitely time to do them though, so that stereotype is one that I still reckon might be plausible :p

Wouldn't do surgery, simply because it's a really gruelling process going through the training and I'm not sure that I'm not really sure that my skills are up to it.

Seeing everything. We spend some weeks on different units, but to be honest attendance has been pretty poor. Exams are coming up and whilst it would be great to get to theatre the cost-benefit just doesn't add up unfortunately.

[vox nihili]

Have finally finished up for the year!

Exams wen't ok—not as well as they did last year, but I've managed to enjoy a better balance between studying and social life and have probably had a happier year than first year, so that's good in the end. To add to that, I've also pursued more opportunities outside of med, which have been fantastic.

A huge highlight this year was getting to go on a sponsored trip to Canberra (if you're a med student, feel free to send me a message about it—it's great) for AMSA National Leadership Development Seminar. There we did the typical kind of conferency stuff, with speakers from a broad range of areas. They were pretty fantastic, but the best part of it by far was getting to meet medical students from all around the country and hang out in Canberra. I made some really wonderful friends there, some of whom I'm seeing next week actually, and even got a chance to sneak into parliament for Question Time.

Next year I have decided to continue to try to pursue things outside of med, even if it means that my marks will suffer for it slightly. To that end, I will be getting more involved in Global Health, as our MedSoc's co-chair of Global Health. I will also continue working with SWOT, a charity initiative aimed at providing VCE students from disadvantaged backgrounds revision programmes, this time in the capacity as their HR Officer.

Med wise, third year sees us all over the shop. Personally, I start off doing GP, then onto psych and after that aged care. The last two rotations of the year, which take place in the year's second half, are paediatrics (at the Children's!) and women's. Looking forward to GP and paeds in particular, the rest is a bit eh but you never know what that might be like at the end of the day!



This will likely be my last entry for the year; potentially something around results time, but I will be in Europe at that point...so probs not.

[Calebark]

A bit early, but wishing you all the luck in the world for the rest of the degree.

I will also continue working with SWOT, a charity initiative aimed at providing VCE students from disadvantaged backgrounds revision programmes, this time in the capacity as their HR Officer.

I also hope you're comfortable with being called a fucking baller because you're a fucking baller.

[vox nihili]

Decided to chuck in a results post now that I'm back from overseas.


Earlier in this journal I briefly discussed having to rejig my expectations around results time. I didn't really give it a full discussion, which is a pity because it's something that played on my mind a lot. When you start med school, you're told 1000x over that you can't expect to do as well as you did in your undergrad. Effectively, everyone who goes into med came into it via an HD average, so given our results are comparative, the majority of the cohort will go from an HD average to something lower.

For the first semester or so, this was difficult to deal with. I'd prided myself on doing really well and suddenly feeling like the dumbest person in the room was challenging. It wasn't until half way through the year, when I did surprisingly well on our midyears (I actually fluked my way into the top 15 or so in the cohort) that I realised that I probably could do really well out of that year. As it turned out, come results time I did: I just scraped through with an 81.

Come second year, I knew the challenge would be bigger. First year is all the pre-clinical stuff, basically the fourth year of biomedicine; whereas, second year is all about clinical knowledge, something which I struggle to study for. As second year progressed, I constantly found myself without any real idea about what I should be doing. I felt very much like I was treading water, as opposed to first year when I worked my arse off and constantly pushed towards my goal of doing well.

Second year eventually got to a point where it became pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to repeat my success. So begun the long process of trying to accept that, particularly as the chances of saving my year at the last minute became more and more distant. There were lots of conversations with loved ones about it, and then conversations with friends, too. At one point, I even discussed it with one of my MD1 tute groups, to try to let them know that I knew what some of them were going through.

Come exam time I didn't prepare nearly as hard as the previous year. I just wanted to pass through respectably and I started to feel reasonably confident that I could do that. When exams came around, I knew I'd put in a solid effort and was certain I would pass competently. It didn't feel like it had the previous year though, when I felt confident that I knew things.

I had VCESS work to do after exams and then headed overseas, so I really didn't think about results much until it was about time for them to come out. When they eventually did come out, it was a WAM change, so I had to calculate it. The WAM change shocked me: it had gone up. I crunched the numbers in my head and worked out that I'd managed an 82.

What hit me was a mixture of joy, crushing guilt and an emotion that can only be termed "what the fuck". My humour is often self-deprecating, but I've never been a person to talk myself down academically. Indeed, I've usually had a fairly good idea of how I'd go. If I'd do well, I knew I'd do well. Likewise, if I'd cooked something, I knew it was cooked.

At the end of it all, I'd spoken to a lot of people about results, including everyone here, and now feel like a total fraud. In high school, I used to be able to wing things pretty well, but at uni I've always prided myself on "earning" my results, so that I ended up with that is something I feel extremely grateful for, but also something that made me feel like a bit of a fraud in the end.

[Shenz0r]

Only just stumbled onto this, but can very strongly echo the sentiment of feeling completely out of your depth in terms of knowledge.

I was the reverse to vox - same grade in MD1 but I took a slight hit in MD2, dropping down to a H2A.

To all prospective medical students though, if you can get good marks, that’s icing on the cake, but remember that it’s the experiences you get and the opportunities you ask for that are the most important! Your clinical skills aren’t entirely reflected by your exam marks. Took a while for me to get over the fact that I wasn’t getting as high as I used to and a lot of medical students have the same issue. Imposter syndrome is very real.

[vox nihili]

To all prospective medical students though, if you can get good marks, that’s icing on the cake, but remember that it’s the experiences you get and the opportunities you ask for that are the most important! Your clinical skills aren’t entirely reflected by your exam marks. Took a while for me to get over the fact that I wasn’t getting as high as I used to and a lot of medical students have the same issue. Imposter syndrome is very real.

This sums it up so well in a way that I couldn't really capture here, thanks so much for this.

Marks matter insofar as they help determine where your internship will be, but I'm not really convinced that they give any insight into the kind of doctor someone will be. "Experiences and opportunities", where I felt I let myself down a lot last year, really do matter a lot more in the long run. Nobody asks their doctor "what mark did you get in medical school", but they do always ask "have you done/seen this before?".