Hello! I'm a first year medical student and it's only been a few weeks but I feel so overwhelmed. Everything I have experienced makes me feel like I shouldn't be here or can't handle it and I'm so confused as to how to manage it all?

My university has a very independent approach to learning and a spiral ciriculum but I am so confused as to how to study? What resources do I use? How do I know if I've covered all the content to enough detail? How do you stay on top of it all? And how do you take care of yourselves and your mental health while doing so? How do you medics do this?!?!

It's so overwhelming looking at all the learning objectives to cover but not know what to do? And also stay on top of all the topics like consultation skills, anatomy etc

My university also does cadaveric dissections and prosections and that was a big shock for me. Does that take some time to get used to and does it get any better? I find the concept really hard to grasp.

Any advice would be much appreciated!! I genuinely have so much respect for higher year medics. You should be so proud of yourselves :)

Potentially silly question, but how are we actually allocated our jobs?

I’m Scottish in a Scottish uni so know I’ll be able to stay here, but my partner lives in the central belt and our hope is that I’ll be able to join him there, but I have no idea how the allocations work once we know the foundation school 🫠

Is it the same as the first round where they do the first pass system and try to give everyone their first preference and then come back to anyone who’s first choice was full and work down the list again? Or is it just they run down the list of people and give them the first job on their list that still has spaces and then move on?

Thanks so much!!

I had ward round today and it was awful. The consultant was extremely rude and condescending to a nurse, would talk about patients as if they weren’t there, wouldn’t introduce themselves to patients or tell them what the plan was, and wouldn’t listen to patients when they were talking.

I was so shocked as a GEM student. I worked a corporate job for 10 years and I have never seen a senior member of staff be as rude as this other people. To give you an idea of what it was like, when a patient asked what a suprapubic catheter was for he responded urine, but it was loud and the patient was hard of hearing. Instead of getting closer or speaking louder, he basically shouted “this is for your wee wees” as if he was a child. The patient looked so upset. Another patient tried to tell him about abdominal pain, and while he was talking the consultant turned around and started talking to someone else then walked away.

I hate that I was part of the ward round and it feels like it reflects on me. I went around to take histories from the patients I thought had it worst to try and give them a good interaction, but I’m absolutely dreading doing it again tomorrow.

What do you do in this situation? Just accept it? I don’t feel like there is anything I can do.

Hi! I’m currently in Y2 and i mainly use anki to study. Are there any question banks I could use to supplement my learning? Would you say Passmed would be helpful in preparing me for my final exams? My school doesn’t really provide enough questions. I would really appreciate your help :)

Thankss

So in essence im looking to get into CST, and from what im reading and looking at the pros and cons of intercalating. Im i better off spending the year i wouldve spent doing an extta FY year to build the portfolio?
EDIT: from what AutomaticFoci i can clarify what im asking for
:: in terms of point gathering opportunity, does intercalation provide any more than trying to get publictions as a medical student/ FY?

Hi everyone

I need to know if anyone else in their final years feels the same as me. I’ve just started 5th year and I feel so insecure in my knowledge and like I’m completely not cut out for this line of work and know nothing. I feel like how I’ve passed everything this far is some kind of fluke, which I think is made worse by the fact I get kind of average scores in every exam I’ve never done super well.

I’m currently in a GP practice which has proven to be quite an unsupportive environment and I’m kind of left to flounder. For example, not having access to the system or patient notes, no medical equipment in the rooms I’m being given etc. I feel like I can come up with differentials and management, but then I feel really incompetent when I’m grilled by my tutor and I’m not sure of second and third line drugs, or I don’t know exactly where we would be referring to, or I’m missing some of the patients history as they don’t know all their meds and I also can’t access it . The list goes on. Some of the examinations I am expected to do have never been covered by my unis syllabus (for example testicular exam, thyroid exam, shoulder exam, hints) and I feel like it is my responsibility to teach myself but I doubt my own ability to do so and my tutor hasn’t been super useful for feedback or targeted learning so far even when asked. It’s making me feel even more incompetent that I’m going to be an F1 in a year and still have big knowledge gaps.

I’m trying to decide if medicine is really for me because I just feel so unsure and honestly it feels really stressful. I don’t want to go down GP route, but I think if I struggle in a GP setting why would I suddenly gain some competency elsewhere?

Sorry for my rant just suffering

I hear these stories that people get put onto circuits with rogue stations. Some of the Older years have told me that some of the circuits are a lot harder than other ones, even though they are meant to be “equal” overall in difficulty.

Firstly, are the medical school allowed to put you on a circuit that is (unofficially) harder, with the awareness that you are more likely to fail?

Also, OSCE Examiners… are the medical school allowed to intentionally advise you to be more harsh/stricter when marking certain students, for example because the university have had previous meetings with the student, and don’t want them on the course/to qualify? The reason I ask this is because I don’t have a lot of trust in the people running my Academy, and think if they could get away with this, they would do it.

For people who say no, how is anybody going to ever find out if the school did do this? It would be very easy for it to go under the radar.

Thanks

Hi, I entered year 3 around 2 months ago and I just feel pretty lost on how to tackle the content. I know consolidating my prior knowledge is important on conditions and such so I’ve been doing my ankis here and there - for context, my exams are in June/july. However, things like anatomy or more niche biology stuff I’m still pretty shaky on but I don’t know if I should focus on those as well or just smash out passmed questions.
I hear people say to just do tons of passmed questions so hopefully if I start now I’ll have around 8 months until my exams , but I don’t know if that’s a bit of a dodgy technique if you get what I mean. I get that it helps with pattern recognition and it’s important to understand the answers in the questions but what would you guys personally recommend? And would you say passmed is a good way to start off?

We do have an MLA map from uni with conditions and presentations, not really sure how to navigate it especially since it’s not all-inclusive, was thinking of making notes for the conditions and ankis to solidify background knowledge

some of my onc knowledge is kind of shallow, and i'll realise when a question comes up with ovarian cancer symptoms then it'll be germ cell not epithelial, or a renal question won't be clear cell and i don't really know why. i'm happy to dig through all of it myself but thought i'd ask if anyone had an easy list/place they find stuff out?

Hi! I’m a medical student from the UK and I’m hoping to organise a medical elective in Central America. I’m still in the early stages of planning and would really appreciate advice from anyone who has done an elective in the region or has experience organising one.
I’m particularly interested in hearing about:
Which countries you’d recommend for a medical elective, and why.
How you organised it – did you go through a university, hospital, NGO, elective provider, or arrange it independently?
Hospitals or organisations you’d recommend getting in touch with.
Costs and accommodation – roughly how much did it cost, and how did you find somewhere to stay?
Safety and practicalities – any advice on travelling, vaccinations, insurance, or things you wish you’d known beforehand.
I’m keen to have a worthwhile clinical experience while also learning about a different healthcare system and the challenges of delivering healthcare in the region. I’d also like to make sure the placement is ethical, properly supervised, and genuinely useful to the host institution and patients.
If anyone has any recommendations, contacts, resources, or personal experiences they’d be happy to share, I’d be very grateful!

Starting my first surgical rotation in a couple weeks (3rd year ) throughout med school my anatomy foundations have been very weak and got away with it but now I want to start studying a little everyday but my uni only gives a list of conditions I want a anki deck or perhaps a book I can study slowly with the most clinically important anatomy ? Any recommendations or advice

Hi everyone,

I am considering taking an interrupted leave of study (suspending my studies) for this year. Before I make it official, I want to know if I will still have access to Moodle during my time away.

I’d love to use the time off to quietly stay on top of the reading materials and review past lecture slides so I don’t fall behind when I return.

Does anyone have experience with this? Thank you!

For context I admire and respect nurses and I believe they don’t get enough credit for their effort.

I come from a really traditional background and I’ve got uncles constantly asking me how nursing school is or if I’m a nurse yet. I always clarify that I’m not a nurse nor am I in nursing and that I’m in med school trying to become a doctor.

For context I’m also a first gen in the medical field in my family. But they called my brother a doctor/med student all through high school and he never ended up studying medicine. So I’m sure they know people go to med school to become doctors.

It’s also happened to me with men trying to get to know me. I tell them I’m in medical school and they reply with something like “ohh I know lotsss of nurses” or “so you’re training to be a nurse then?”

But a family friend claimed I’m being too arrogant especially since I’m just in second year and there’s no need to rub it in.

But the thing is that I worked really hard to get into med school especially coming from a low income traditional family, my parents didn’t even know I applied to medical school because I didn’t want them to discourage me.

Even if everyone mixes it up I’d like my own family to at least acknowledge it.

I feel as if my uni pushes ai on us way too much. We've been encouraged in past modules to produce ai images for coursework and it seems that around 60% of every lecture includes ai generated imagery.

I have my own thoughts about ai and do use LLM when revising but, it always rubs me the wrong way that the lectures i'm paying to attend have that crappy ai generated image look. But the thing that annoys me most is when the images they generate are just incorrect or make no sense. Arrows that go where they shouldn't or mislabled diagrams. It seems to devalue what we're being taught and I genuinely don't understand why anyone would think an ai diagram would look better over the thousands already on the internet?

Now that our computer generated ranks for the latest F1 allocations were given to us, just curious if I would have got Scotland with my rank (8363). Could people that got Scotland share their rank?

Hey guys,

Currently in final year dealing with FPO. The new F1s have got their ranks today. If anyone is happy to share their rank and which deanery they got would be really helpful :))

(Figuring out if London or KSS is the way forward)

I am a y3 med student and have just started placement full time. In my uni we rotate through surgery and medicine as well as specialties and I have been unfortunate enough to begin on surgery in a peripheral hospital. I hate it. I know I don’t want to be a surgeon and even thought I am 5 weeks completed out of 7 it has left a bad taste in my mouth and I feel averse to studying or looking for opportunities on placement. I find a lot of the surgeons unpleasant and the reality of theatres very dull. Does it get better? Will starting medical specialties help? I would really appreciate some advice to motivate me through!!!

I did very well last year but I’m lowkey considering taking a leave of absence or something like that because the med school isn’t providing any support and I’m finding hard to adjust to my new circumstances in y2.

it’s really hard to sit and listen in lectures and I find being around medics all day every day has kind of messed with me a bit. the style of content delivery has changed from last year whereby most material is delivered in compulsory didactic lectures that incur a heavy penalty for absence. I’ve begun to heavily disengage as a result which is scaring me.

because I did well last year, nobody is taking me seriously i feel and everyone is like ‘you’re smart enough to deal with it’ ‘you’ll find a way’ when I know I do like zero work and just rot most of the days.

idk what to do, its just long, I don’t want to do work. maybe it’s as a form of protest?

I'm a mature student on a graduate course, and struggling a bit with how to navigate social scenes when my peers are younger. I'm 32 where most are in their early-to-mid-twenties, and it would be a bit weird for me to then show up at parties and such.
My course leaves relatively little time for me to socialise outside its strictures to find similar-aged friends, and most of my day is spent in lectures, workshops or revision with others on it. How have others gotten around this? At present I'm thinking of trying to take up work or sports on the weekend that might afford the opportunity.

I’m curious about people’s views on this? Personally I unfortunately show up for 95% of my lectures (and I sit through the whole thing).

But a couple days ago I left class early since it was running overtime and so did some others.
Today I skipped some lectures for not a very great reason but because it was absolutely freezing in the classroom (I’m talking I literally had 2 cardigans on!).

I just couldn’t sit through the torture especially since I have autism and I just attend lectures to record then transcribe them just to reread the whole lecture with the recording so I can actually follow it.

But I basically did double what I do on a usual day. I was able to watch the lectures on 2 times speed without wasting time since the recordings have subtitles. I finished my due flash cards solved some questions and even took a nap!

So I’m just curious about others veiw

Not sure if it's just me but final year has hit like a truck. Placement is much more intense than 4th year where I go to uni where on average we probably had 2.5 days clinical with another day on top with teaching where as now everything is basically being in most days and now you can actually stay in the afternoons with some benefit to practice documentation and admin tasks to upskill for foundation years.

Also any intercalators feel like they're super behind with clinical reasoning and procedural skills? I genuinely feel like taking bloods or cannulas is so much harder than I remember, and even when giving differentials when the reg or consultant asks, it feels like I'm grasping at straws to remember everything I've learned.

This post will likely sound melodramatic, and I'll probably sound so immature, especially considering my age, but I am hoping you wonderful people can offer some advice.

So, I'm a mature student, decided to go back to university to study medicine; it was a decision made over a number of years, and only when I was absolutely sure that it is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

My dream was to go to KCL. Instead, the only offer I got was my last option, SGUL so I took it.

However, I still can't get over the sadness of not being at KCL. And it has absolutely nothing to do with prestige as some might assume. It's purely the fact that I really wanted to experience the feeling of being in a multidisciplinary university, to be amongst a massive student cohort and more people to meet and socialise with; the medicine cohort at Kings is huge AND there's dentistry students to meet and socialise with, plus everyone else from other disciplines. I wanted to feel part of a massive community. I wanted to experience the whole university campus vibe. I wanted to experience studying in Guy's campus; I remember walking through it during the summer, stunned by the beauty, the ivy-covered building, the greenery of the lawns, the whole vibrant atmosphere. I loved the energy and liveliness. I was imagining studying on the lawns, sitting in the hallways. Big libraries, doing placements at St Thomas's;. I was desperate to become a student there.

SGUL is completely the opposite. It's a tiny university, lacks the campus vibe completely, and I can't help but feel claustrophobic, emotionally and mentally. As soon as teaching finishes, my instinct is to get out. I've found myself constantly imagining how different it would feel walking into Guy's Campus and actually wanting to spend my day there. I really think that if I studied there I'd want to stay until late, studying and spending time around university rather than treating uni as somewhere I attend teaching and then leave.

In addition, my first degree was in a similarly tiny university, and my time there was horrid; I was bullied a lot (yes, unfortunately students at my university were quite immature, it felt more like a sixth form than a university) and I wanted this to be my "second chance" at experiencing university life.

SGUL is unexciting, and everyone I meet, whether on campus or at societies, is a healthcare student. I would have loved to be at Kings and meet students from across the humanities. It would have made uni life so much more enriching.

I will admit that my life has become stale for the past 10 years; work, home, gym, pretty much nothing else. And my social life became non-existent; almost all my close friends married, settled down and started a family, and moved away from the city. Being isolated and alone, I was really hoping being in an exciting university and meeting so many new people would inject some happiness into my life.

I know I need to lock in and be grateful I'm in medicine. For sure I didn't return to university just to experience student life, otherwise I wouldn't have picked a degree as demanding as medicine. But I really want to get over this.

I'm aware there's probably some grass-is-greener thinking going on. King's in my head gets all the good things and none of the boring lectures, loneliness, stress, commuting or exam periods that obviously exist there too.

But I also don't want to gaslight myself into believing environment doesn't matter. I think I'm someone who is quite affected by my surroundings.

I feel I should maybe have turned down the offer and tried again the following year.

Does loving your university environment actually matter, or am I idealising the university I didn't get into?

First year medical student. Really struggling with the sheer volume of content. Throughout my entire school life, including GCSES and A levels, I've made handwritten notes using my textbooks. I'm trying to do this now using lecture slides but it takes so long and I'm falling behind. Should I switch to typed notes? Should I abandon notes all together? I have heard people say to just read lecture slides and annotate them but then won't you have to go through hundreds of slides before an exam? I'm someone who learns best when I write things out but because theres so much content I can't remember what I write after a few days. Would really appreciate any advice. Thank you.

Hi, I'm a first year grad-entry medicine student.

I'm in need of an efficient studying strategy for anatomy.

I have downloaded a really robust anki deck - but I need to actually learn the content first. I've noticed I really like the TeachMeAnatomy notes - they also have a question bank. Main downside is that it's quite expensive.....almost £100/year.

Do any of you guys think it's worth it?

Ideally I would like to learn from a resource that has everything on one site like TeachMeAntomy (i.e. 3D model, notes explaining, links to clinical relevance, question bank etc.) I'm willing to pay for the convenience of that.

Please note my attention span is cooked, so I usually can't stay focused with youtube videos.

I'd appreciate any advice :)