I think i'm really going to enjoy the relaxed informal atmosphere of this course. The teaching team are pretty much all still excited about teaching this course (this is only it's 3rd year) and work really well together. Let me try and explain how an average week is goign to go for me.
Monday morning at 9:00 we meet in "facilitated graduate groups" of about 9 people to be presented with and discuss this weeks topic (i.e. pregnancy) and learning outcomes (what we need to learn about it by the end of the week).... we then go about trying to decide together how best to learn those outcomes. Monday afternoon we go out on G.P. Visits, in groups of 4 to the same G.P. for the Semester, where we will meet patients (who have agreed to come in) who are good examples of the case we are studying. Here we will also learn clinical skills of history taking and examination.
Tuesday, we go to Winchester Hospital, and are taught more by the teaching team there, through lectures, having patients come in, visiting patients in wards, practicing clinical skills such as veinipuncture, examination techniques and other sorts of things.....,
Wednesday there are "optional lectures" i.e. lectures to focus our learning such as anatomy, immunology, pharmacology, and loads of other words that end in "ology". Wednesday afternoon we have a dissection room tutorial (but we are free to use the room and the "specimens" any time during the week).
Thursday morning is again optional lectures (I'm guessing I'm going to attend all of these as I don't have a Phd in BioChemistry of Physiology like many of my classmates). And then Thursday afternoons is independent study with optional post-mortem demonstrations.
Friday, is a shortened day, at 11:00 we meet again in our "facilitated graduate groups" and discuss what we've learned and then in the afternoon we have a plenary session with an expert in the field we've been studying.
And that's a typical week. Basically the idea of the course is that the early clinical experience and the constant attention to the same issue, will enable us to learn a lot more effectively than just having disjointed lectures. We'll have to see how that all works out though.
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2 comments:
Sounds fascinating.
Alas for Fresher's flu-we didn't have anything like that here, though I'm sure there were a number of people who had what could be called "Y1 hangover" which probably felt about the same.
As to superficiality, yes that will take time, I agree, but I'm glad you've at least met some interesting people. And having someone who knows you will be invaluable too, as a familiar face and for those times when you're sick of superficiality.
Your program sounds a bit like the other track here. I must say I am a bit envious of "relaxed" and so much patient contact and learning of clinical skills. So what are your specimens? I think you mentioned that this med school wasn't doing traditional cadavers, so...??? A couple of questions: will you be having all the same lecturers, or will the rotate randomly so you don't remember some of their names and have lost count of how many you've had (hypothecially of course:)? Are you always in the same room? and Do you have exams? All in all it sounds like a very cool program. Have a nice second week!
...and sometime you will have to tell me the King Herod story;)
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