MEDSCHOOL SURVIVAL GUIDE!
HOW TO GET THROUGH MED SCHOOL
⏺A preview to the golden years, looking back:
In 2nd year you get a hang of how these subjects are done and you have a few people around you that you trust and you feel like it’s all falling into place.
Then comes 3rd year the year I would 100% rank as the worst year of med school because there’s a sudden shift of subjects and your whole “methods of studying” are suddenly not good enough to memorize everything you’re asked to (yes, I’m talking about pharmacology. Pathology is fun and forensics… well let’s just say you get past that too!) And the whole studying the last 3 months plan sounds like the worst idea. All of you were lucky to have seniors guide you through it all, we had NO ONE and oh boy! Were we a total mess.
4th year is the year we all are allowed to be a little laid back, relaxed and people even start taking you seriously because you enter the clinical world and doing this degree actually starts to make sense.
Finally comes 5th year, it’s seems surreal to even have made it this far, you have so many plans on what to do after you graduate; FCPS, PLAB, USMLE?, so many dreams of the future but as soon as you enter you’re first day they pop your bubble and drill starts. This year is COMPLETELY different from all the others. The syllabus is like 10x more, everyone expects you to participate and they want you to know the anatomy, physiology and pathology of everything you’ve already forgotten, you’re supposed to have perfected the art of history taking, performing clinical examinations should be on your fingertips and all of a sudden you have 15 papers and pre-proffs plus proffs are like months long. At the end of it you’re burnt out and med school has successfully drained the life out of you. Is it all worth it? Absolutely!
⏺These are a few things that i think are absolutely mandatory
to get
through med school;
1.Have a good relationship with your seniors:
I cannot stress on this enough. It is so important to maintain a good relationship with your seniors. This was the thing we; the pioneers lacked the most during our degree. Your seniors have been through it, they know what’s important, they have more knowledge than you about the subject, they know what the teacher likes, what books and learning aids are useful and most of all they manage to pass it and trust me that’s big. So don’t hesitate to go to them and ask what’s important, get your books marked and tell them to give you notes and learning aids they used. You don’t have to know every single detail written in the book (LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE FRONT SEATS), know what’s important and relevant to the goal; passing your proffs. Also have a good rapport with your teachers especially the demonstrators and AP’s because that way anytime you have a query, they’ll always be there to help. This would eventually help you in your exams too because they’d know that you’re hardworking and eager so even if you mess up a bit, they’ll try to figure something out for you. On the other hand for someone completely invisible they might not feel the same about them.
2.Play it safe:
In med school you constantly have to study for one thing or another; substages, PBL’s, class tests, morning reports, CPC’s, modules, pre-annuals, annuals etc. As overwhelming that gets, make sure you try and study for all it. They make you ready for the final assessment. If you study something for a minor test just to pass (e.g for a PBL just 30 mins before it from a website on the internet or a short book), trust me when you study that thing properly for your proffs it’ll take you half the time and you’ll always remember it because that’s how the human mind works; by overlapping identical information at multiple occasions. Right? Another very important thing is your internals. Internals count for about 30% in your whole overall grade and no matter how much you make yourself believe that you’ll do extremely well in the proff you should always have the leverage to mess up a little here and there. At the end of the day even 0.1% counts so don’t let that go. Even if you haven’t studied a word for a substage or PBL, attempt it even if you fail. Trust me. I say these things with experience. DO NOT MISS ANYTHING THAT EVEN ADDS 0.05% IN YOUR INTERNAL ASSESMENT. Even if you fail that test, something is added into your internals. On the other hand if you miss it, you get a zero. In PBL’s, substages, assessments you have a part of a section you have to cover and in modules the syllabus is divided into 1/3 of that of the proff so studying bit by bit and adding to your internals is easier. Whereas proff season is extremely stressful, you’re mentally and physically drained, you experience nervous breakdowns and periods of blanking out, your mind is so saturated by all the knowledge you’re trying to cram at the last moment that it’s a lot easier to mess things up. So play it safe with having your internals there to back you up.
3.Study smart:
Study smart does not mean study less. It means study relevant and revise that because that’s what will eventually help you. Like I said overlap information in your head to remember it more efficiently. As much as it will satisfy you to hoard all that unimportant information in your head to feel smart, it’ll just waste more of your time and do literally no good to you in your future. Medicine is ranked as one of the hardest degrees in the world not because its super complicated, it’s honestly not but it’s difficult because you’re expected to do so much in such little time. Same thing goes for when you’re sitting in your professional examinations you only have 3 hours; in that time you can only write as much and you’re only going to get marks for what’s relevant. So cut yourself some slack study smart and relevant and save yourself sometime to actually just rest your mind and maybe treat yourself to a good dessert or take a nice walk or go on a driving cruise.
Studying smart also includes studying with concept. Understand what you’re doing. MARK MY WORDS; everything in medicine makes sense. E.g. in anatomy use visual aid like models, videos, draw on your own body to understand, repeat everything to a friend and hear them out too and also understand what the terms mean e.g the muscle abductor pollicus longus, just the name tells you the function of the muscle i.e. abduction, pollicus tell you it’s insertion i.e. the thumb and longus tells you that its origin is somewhere above the hand in the long bones. So even if you forget what you crammed in the paper, you can at least write something on your own. For physiology and biochemistry look at all the diagrams in guyton and lippincott, make them yourself to understand what’s happening (also make them in the paper, teachers love it), watch videos and try to grasp the concept behind why something is physiologically happening in your body and what’s the point of it. Constantly be curious on why something is happening and use your phones or ask a teacher or open the book to solve your query. You will never forget this piece on information, 100% guaranteed. Coming to pharmacology, there’s nothing more I can say other than repeat everything at least 20-30 times because this subject is extremely volatile, keep overlapping that information in your head, don’t miss PBL’s even if you haven’t studied for them and most importantly study smart and relevant. There is only as much a human mind can remember and store so make sure that’s the important things ONLY. About pathology, know that the whole department loves every single one of us. They work so hard on their slides that mostly they are enough but nonetheless both the text books; Levinson and Robin’s are both really good and easy to understand so do both slides and book side by side. Pathology is the extension of physiology so just take it forward like that. Also ALWAYS do the end of the slides questions in pathology, always. Thank me later. For forensics, just try and come in peace with the subject first and don’t neglect it. Keep doing it bit by bit the whole year and you’ll get past it easily. Then come’s community medicine, as unimportant as that subject seems trust me it’s one that will help you the most later on in life (not just saying that because my mom’s the HoD). Don’t take it lightly, it’s a super easy subject that can gain you easy marks. It has as much marks as pathology so it’s a core subject. DO A GOOD RESEARCH STUDY and learn how to conduct one for the future. Also your research accounts for 20 absolute marks in your internals (I think) and that’s a lot. I recently was able to publish my research article I did in 4th year and not only does it looks absolutely amazing on my resume and gives me an edge over the others but it will also get me marks if I plan to do my FCPS and it’s important if you want to give you USMLE too. No one will teach you epidemiology and biostatistics after this so you better get your head down and practice. Study advice: use Elyas for biostatistics, it’ll clear all your concepts. Also cram this line; DO NOT LEAVE ANYTHING IN THE PAPER even if you have 0 knowledge about. Either try to make sense up by the terms used or just write anything you feel is relevant to the question. You never know you might just wing it. So these were all the basic science subjects.
For clinical subjects all I’ll say in this blog is that stay consistent, participate as much as you can, don’t shy away and don’t be scared of making mistakes, DO NOT take history taking lightly; try to take every chance to present your history to the consultant, focus on the little things teachers tell you and incorporate that into your next history (advice: no one’s history can ever be perfect so don’t get disheartened), interact with as many patients as you can because the one thing that will give you the edge over the others is good communication skills, practice as much clinical examination as possible (do it on your friends and then on patients to see the difference between normal and abnormal), spend as much time in the hospital and skills lab as you can, take responsibility on your own don’t depend on the teacher to teach you everything and stay back after hours and ask the nurses to teach you basic procedures e.g taking bloods, inserting IV cannulas, foley’s catheters etc. Be active in your clinical rounds, make yourself visible to the teachers and make sure they know that you’re eager to learn. Such drama gains you a lot of marks. Good communication, empathy and the will to constantly improve your skills will get you past it just like that. One of my biggest regrets is that I could’ve leant a lot more if I was a little more consistent with my wards in my 3rd and 4th year. Don’t make that mistake, every visit to the hospital teaches you something. This is just a gist of a few points to get through your clinical rotations. I’ll probably write another blog on how to get through clinical subjects and rotations if you guys want because that’s a whole other world.
4. Self-care and sanity checks:
Med school can really take a toll on your mental health so do yourself a favor and give yourself a break from time to time; go out with your friends, treat yourself with a spa day, plan a trip with friends/family, join the gym, do morning runs followed by meditation and if nothing helps then don’t ever shy away from getting help. FMC has its own psychologist, Dr. Semra Salik and she’s really good. I took help from her during the initial lockdown. Final year just started and our whole degree got so delayed, there was no sense of purpose, all our expectations and dreams made no sense and the uncertainty of everything just took a huge hit on my mental health. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in admitting that things have gotten out of hand and you need some extra help to manage your anxieties. It’s important that you make sure that you don’t let MBBS get to your head. Constantly remind yourself and your friends that now that you’re in the degree, you’ll get past it too. I believe that the best way to manage it all is by keeping a balance. Make it a habit to keep checking up on your friends and yourself.
5. Be an all rounder:
This point is optional and just my opinion on how it should be taking in context my own experience. If you want to take my advice then try to be an all-rounder, don’t regret it later that when everyone else was having fun and making memories, you spent all your time in the books because at the end it wouldn’t make much of a difference but this time will not come back and by then you would’ve missed out on all of it. I did everything in my med school days I played sports, I took part in every extra curricula’s, represented FMC in various competitions, we bunked and went out or just stayed in to spend time with our friends, we explored our creative sides and always gave ourselves a break when it got too much. To be honest, I used to feel so sorry for the people who stayed back at home in sports week, Airfest or Air nexus because that’s one week where you can do so much and have so much fun with your friends. So what if you have your modules a week? Or you miss a few classes? I mean manage your time and just study to pass the module. Study in the day and attend social events at night or vice versa. We’ve been through it too and I never missed one event. I don’t regret it one bit. Now that corona is there things might never be the same so you might’ve just missed out on one of the biggest experience of your college life. It’s still not too late to make good memories while it lasts. On the other hand I spent a lot of time group studying (as it always worked the best for me and my friends, we spent 5 years studying with each other and we wouldn’t do it any other way but you do you and know how you can study), sat in the library for hours to understand a topic, had study sleepovers, put in extra clinical hours, took extra histories, spent a lot of time with patients, went to skills labs even in our prep leaves along with all this I experienced nervous breakdowns and anxiety attacks but somehow pulled through and got done with this degree. So once you’re in you’ll definitely find a way out.
To conclude my blog all I want to say is that this too shall
pass. So make it worth your time and effort. You will make friends and lose some,
you might even get heartbroken, maybe people you trust the most will try to
bring you down but support will come your way from the most unexpected friends,
you’ll fail in some tests and in others you’ll get the high scores, some days
you’ll get insulted by the teacher and on others they’ll praise you for your
effort, one day you’ll understand everything and the other day you’ll just be
blank, at times you’ll get the most compliant patient and at other times you
might get one that would make you question your own existence. So in this 5
year long journey make sure you don’t lose the amazing person you are, make
yourself the best version of you. Only then will you be a “good doctor” for
others. Apologies for anyone who might’ve found this blog offensive or
disheartening in anyway. I just put in words my own experience. It’s different
for everyone so YOU DO YOU. Best wishes!
edited by: Aiza Anwar (Publishing director)
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