4th year medical student!
‘Good morning sir, my name is Chun Peng. I’m a 4th year medical student.’
I’ve been rehearsing this phrase ever since my results came out yesterday! Yes. Finally i’m a 4th year medical student, after one and a half year of 3rd year.
After IMU, we are supposed to continue as fourth year (sem 7) in most of the partner university and begin clincals. However, in Uni Melbourne sem 6 and 7 is a research year (we called it AMS) and we are exempted from it. Since they couldn’t put us in sem 8, so they put us in sem 5 again! Thus, we had to stay for another semester in pre-clinical, going for lectures and doing tons of PBLs again.
In sem 5 here, we did Microbiology, Immunology and Oncology. It’s a difficult semester because the focus of curriculum here is very different from IMU.
In IMU, we were a lot more clinical based, which means we focused a lot on pathology and clinical features of the disease. For example:
- We’ll understand the different types of leukemia, their respective risk factors, their presentation and prognosis.
- In microbiology, we know EHEC causes bloody diarrhoea. But we were never expected to know the mechanism.
- We had practicals where we looked down into slides too see various organisms. But, as quoted by Ganesh, this will never come out in exam! True enough, many of us attempted to skip.
- We focused a lot on physical examination on the patient. We had to report every step we do in the process.
- History taking.. Our aim is to gather as much information as possible regarding the patient’s illness within the 5 mins.
Melbourne is very research based, which means they would want us to understand mechanisms to the very molecular level in each of the disease.
- Using leukemia again, we need to know which gene is involved and what is the effect when that gene is translocated to its new location. But we are not expected to know the types of leukemia.
- In microbiology, we need to know the exactly which toxin EHEC produce and which ion channel it affects and how it damages the capillaries to cause bloody diarrhoea and eventually lead to haemolytic uraemic syndrome.
- We have practical every week. We learn about different cultures and the various investigation methods for each microorganisms which can only be found in IMU notes.
- For physical examination. We are only required to act it out, no reporting at all.
- History taking.. We focus on the biopsychosocial model, thus besides understanding the presenting illness, we need to find out how has it affected the patient in every aspect of his life.
These are some of the fundamental differences between IMU and Uni Melb. Studying here is definite challenge. But I’m quite proud to say that I have a better understanding in microbiology, immunology and oncology which we learned them only as bits and pieces in sem 1 and 2 in IMU.
Congratulations to the M1s who are sent to Uni Melb! Most probably we will organise a gathering together with the M2s who will be coming here at the end of this year!
Cheers!
Here I come Austin Hospital!!
