Stephanie Bareford     End of 1^st Year Report

I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone. Only a week ago I found out that I have passed all my exams and will progress into year 2, though it still seems as if I have just started medical school.

I look back at this year, and it is now that I realise how much I have learnt and developed since last September, whereas leading up to my exams only a month ago, I felt the complete opposite. Last summer I was so excited to start University to start learning to become a doctor, and although some of that excitement is still there, I’m now more excited about other things, like upcoming placements and meeting the new intake that will be starting in September. 

Swansea University is still a relatively new medical school and this year for the first time had four years at the school (before in 3^rd and 4^th year you went to Cardiff) and had its first fully-fledged graduates (as before people graduated from Cardiff), which was very exciting. There was a special ball in October to celebrate this, which was wonderful and very well organised by the Medsoc, and a great opportunity to meet the years above. As a new, as well as quite small school, the clinicians and teachers are very enthusiastic and most of them know you by your first name by the end of the first term, which was very comforting leading up to the first lot of exams. It was also useful when it came to our first placement in March that we knew some of the people we were working around. My placement was in Burns and Plastics in Morriston hospital (a tertiary centre), and was a fantastic opportunity to not only see what went on, but to also practise some of our history taking and clinical skills we had learnt over the year. Though I’m still at the beginning of my career in medicine, these placements are very useful for not just learning, but also helping us to decide what specialty we would like to go into later, and my placement has perhaps pointed me away from the direction of surgery at this moment, though this could all change in years to come.

I’m very happy at Swansea, as it’s not just a great place to study medicine; it’s a beautiful place to be when you want to do something not related to medicine. With beaches almost right on your doorstep and the Gower just a 15-minute drive down the road, we tended to take full advantage of the nice weather, and especially the lovely summer we had, and would head down to the beach for a day or afternoon after lectures.

Looking to next year I’m quite nervous about how much extra work and responsibility we will have. On the other hand, we will have more opportunities out in clinical placements, which I am excited about and look forward to finding out where I will be placed in my next placement just before Christmas.

Finally, I would like to say a great big thank you to Kidderminster Medical Society for their support through this year and I hope they can continue to support medical students in the future. Medical school was a big thing to adjust to and there are many worries going through your mind, including educational, social and financial. Though for KMS to help put your mind mostly at ease financially, I found that I could put more of my efforts into getting a good educational result and having a strong social support network at the end of my first year.

Stephanie Bareford

Alice Jones

 My name is Alice and I was the recipient of the Kidderminster post-graduate bursary at the beginning of the last academic year for Graduate Entry Medicine at Birmingham University. I am writing primarily to send my gratitude and to also give a small report on how the year has gone. Having the rare luxury of financial security to cover living expenses for a whole academic year, in probably one of the most challenging years of my life so far, was extremely helpful and enabled me to really concentrate on my studies. So thank you very much!

GEC medicine is certainly not for the faint hearted, and although I’d heard from various sources that it was going to be a tough year, I don’t think I could have ever really imagined what it was going to be like. In approximately 30 weeks we covered what seemed like pretty much all the bases of medicine on a whistle-stop tour: cancer and cell biology; the respiratory and cardiovascular system; the gastrointestinal tract and the immune system; the nervous system; endocrinology and then reproduction and pregnancy. Every week through the Problem-Based-Learning (PBL) framework, we tackled various problems in groups of 8, discussing physiology and biology; as well as trying to elaborate on psychological and sociological issues. I do agree that PBL is a good way of learning as it prevents students from mindless note taking in lectures, which does not encourage independent learning. For 3 days of the week we had to talk about what we had researched without notes, which meant that we needed to have understood and memorised information in order to be able to contribute to discussion. If any difficulties arose over the course of a group session, these could be unpicked and clarified with fellow peers. Because GECs (as we are called) are from various fields of science and expertise, we could help each other out. It is certainly an advantage to study alongside others who have different and interesting previous life experiences and educations, as is the case with GEC medicine, and I was sad to read in the student BMA recently that some medical schools are thinking of stopping their Graduate medicine courses. I can see my friends that I have formed on the course becoming excellent doctors in the future.

Before commencing GEC medicine at Birmingham, I studied Biology at the University of York, and then I worked as a Health care assistant (HCA) on the Clinical Decisions Unit at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Selly Oak. It was an incredibly insightful job that I would encourage anyone to do who is considering a career in health. I valued being able to talk to the patients and spend time giving them personal care to help to make them feel comfortable on the ward. I have signed onto the in-house bank of HCA staff, and in the Christmas holidays I was able to work a few shifts on the ward. I think the manual handling and communication skills I learnt through being a HCA will be really useful to me in the future.

Now I have started my 3^rd year, I am seeing a lot more of the clinical side of Medicine, and I find being in Worcester hospital on placement very exciting. I am based on the Gastro-intestinal Unit for my first medical rotation, and then I will move to vascular surgery after about 6 weeks. I am not sure what kind of doctor I want to be once I am eventually able to specialise, but I know there is lots of time to think about this over the forthcoming years, and I am excited to think of the many options which might be available to me. A dream of mine is to work with an international humanitarian aid organisation such as MSF or the British Red Cross. Alternatively, if I decide to stay local, I would like to work with refugees in the west midlands as I am aware of their plight in accessing health care services. Currently I am looking into learning Hindi or Urdu from scratch, as I have a passion for Indian culture having travelled to India a few times. I think it would be useful to have a basic grasp of a widely spoken language in a city such as Birmingham, with a wonderfully vibrant ethnic mix of people. As you might imagine, I am already looking forward to the chance to go and work abroad in my 4^th year: every week I change my mind about which country I would like to spend my elective!

So all in all, I have had a very challenging, yet exciting start to my medical career, and I have met some very inspiring people in the field. I would like to finish by again saying thank you to the Kidderminster Medical Society for the bursary I was given in my first year of my studies.

Alice Jones

Shannon Lennock

 Firstly, I must begin by saying what a privilege it is to have been given a place studying medicine. My first year of medical school has gone by so quickly and it seems crazy that I am already one month into my second year. The year constantly threw surprises at me, especially when I went onto the ward for the first time to take a patient history from a lady who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Soon after my initial questions I realised that I had been sent to the wrong patient and this patient did not have breast cancer but had actually been admitted to the emergency department following a suicide attempt. This taught me very early on that you never know what each day is going to bring in the medical profession and you have to be ready to think on your feet. Although, this is definitely challenging, it is also an aspect that I thoroughly enjoy.

Having studied biomedical sciences previously at Cardiff University, it is really rewarding to be able to apply the knowledge I learnt and am still learning to a clinical setting.  I have most certainly found studying medicine a lot more challenging than my undergraduate degree, as being on a graduate-course there is a lot more self-directed learning expected.

My first year included studying both the respiratory and cardiovascular system; whilst studying different aspects of these systems in my previous degree I started medicine thinking that I would most likely want to specialise in cardiology and not the biggest fan of the idea of respiratory. However, having now experienced these specialties clinically on the wards, I have completely changed my mind and am a strong lover of the respiratory system and related pathologies and not so keen on cardiology.

The summer examinations were hard, mainly because I wasn’t quite sure what to expect in the exam, I found it was very clinically orientated, enforcing you to apply what you had learnt throughout the year to clinical scenarios.  Fortunately, I passed and was very happy with my results, finishing the first year on a very good note!

I cannot express how grateful I am for the bursary from the Kidderminster Medical Society as this has helped me dramatically; especially at Christmas time when my laptop decided to give up and I was left computer-less with a coursework deadline looming over me!

In addition to the academic side of my first year studying medicine, I must also emphasise that I have met some truly wonderful people on this course and hope to call them friends for life.

Shannon Lennock

Laurence Hopkins

This time last year I received a substantial bursary from you. I believe this award had a significant impact on my enjoyment of the previous year and my subsequent achievements. I hope this report goes some way in demonstrating how grateful I am.

Being financially secure affords both time and opportunity that would otherwise be spent working to make ends meet. You may well be aware that tuition fees are now £9000 per year and tuition fee loans only cover £6000 in the first year. Students must therefore find £3000 from their own pockets during their first year at medical school. I personally would otherwise have had to of taken a part time job to find this amount of money.

Upon starting graduate entry medicine I had (perhaps foolishly!) chosen to finish the lab work towards my PhD early and write up during my first year of med school. The shortened 4 year course at the University of Southampton is based on the problem-based learning (PBL) system which presented a new style of learning and a significant challenge due to the breadth of subject and accelerated nature of the course. I was fortunate in having some great friends on the course, who helped me in covering and understanding the course material, and the time your bursary afforded so that I was able to pass all aspects of my first year at medical school. I completed my PhD thesis, passed my viva with minor corrections and, in the last year, I have first-authored publications in the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Pathology and co-authored publications in PLOS Medicine and Endocrinology. This would not have been possible if I had also been working in a part time job.

The bursary you granted me also allowed me to take two, one-week, electives at the Liver Transplant Unit at St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland in December and August. Having spent 4 years during my PhD attached to the liver transplant unit at the QE Hospital Birmingham from a mainly academic perspective, these were amazing opportunities to see the clinical side of hepatology and to get a real sense of what the job of hospital doctors entails.

I wouldn't have been able to achieve all of these things or take the opportunity to pursue electives without the time and freedom the Kidderminster Medical Society bursary afforded me and I am incredibly grateful and indebted to the society and its donors for this. The bursary made a huge difference to my first year at medical school, as I'm sure it does for all recipients, and long may it continue to do so.

Laurence Hopkins