The FAQs

1. How should I prepare for a lecture?

In order to make the most out of physically going to a lecture, it’s important to do your pre-reading. Yep, has to be done unfortunately. I would normally allocate 1-2 hours (I’m a slow reader lol) the day before a lecture to sit down with the lecture handout (h/o) and read it carefully. I’d look up new words and concepts using high yield resources such as Wikipedia and Osmosis, to gain some familiarity with them. This will help in 3 ways: 1.It will help you understand the lecturer’s explanations, 2.It’ll help you realise what concepts and points are tricky, so you know when to be more alert as the lecturer talks about them/ or go onto ask the  lecturer at the end in person and finally 3.It’ll be easier to zone back in when you inevitably zone out for a couple of seconds or even minutes. Doing this for every lecture can be challenging but is well worth the effort as it makes the lectures so much more useful than going in blind.

2.Where can I find lecture materials and practice exam papers?

Your university should have a student portal and associated learning website containing all the subjects (anatomy, physiology, biochemistry etc.) and lecture topics with the associated resources (written lecture h/o, PowerPoint (PP) slides, past papers etc.). For example, the Cambridge one is termed the “the vle” or “virtual learning environment”, most unis use the same or similar platform. The best people to ask to make sure would be the year above.

3. How should I make notes during lectures?

Majority of the things that the lecturer says will be on the h/o or PP slides so you won’t have to write huge masses. However, the lecturer might say the odd new thing or explains a poorly written point much better, so it’s worth annotating the h/o with this extra bit. I personally like keeping everything in one place so prefer annotating on the h/o, but others like keeping their notes separate on another file or paper. For more information on note taking, check out the askCamDoc Tips highlight on our IG page.

4.How is medicine broken down in pre-clinicals?

So the main subjects in pre-clinical medicine are: anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, neuroscience, pharmacology, pathology, histology, human reproduction with a few other small print ones too. Within these main subjects, there will be further topics. For example, within “pathology” there will be “infectious diseases”, which may be split further into “bacteriology, “virology” etc. Basically, it’s a rabbit hole and you can dive deeper and deeper. But not to worry, there is a defined limit of knowledge you’ll need to know for the exams. Remember to look at the learning objectives! (See the Guide post). Also, the subjects mentioned above don’t have to be learnt all at once. For example, in Cambridge, you learn anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and histology in year 1 and the rest in year 2. 

5.How does the uni teach us medicine in a typical week?  

Regardless of what university you’re at, the responsibility of learning medicine is on you. The university however does facilitate this by providing you lectures (on all subjects), dissection labs (for anatomy) and practical labs (for biochemistry, physiology, histology, pharmacology and pathology). Typically, you’ll have 2-3 lectures per main subject per week, and 2-3 lab sessions per week. I personally recommend pre-reading for all the lectures and sessions and going to all of them; see the Guide post. But, not to worry if you can’t make it for some reason, you should be able to catch-up!

6.How do I prepare for dissection/prosection?

Dissection (carefully “cutting” with a scalpel and other tools) is when you have the opportunity to learn anatomy by studying a human cadaver and dissecting it yourself. Whilst prosections are pre-dissected (by someone else) cadaveric specimens. Some pointers now. Make sure you learn the theory in advance of the session. For example, if the session is on the muscles of the upper limb, then read about this in advance using the dissection manual and the Gray’s Anatomy For Students textbook (using mainly their diagrams). You will get so much more out of the experience, if you already know where things are likely to be, where to make the incision etc. Eat and drink plenty before you go into the session.