Thoughts on leaving medical school, part 1

Now I have graduated I thought it would be a good time to look back over my time as a medical student and share some of my thoughts and experiences with you all. I'm going to focus on my time at Manchester rather than spend too much time talking about my St Andrews days, since I think that it is the last three years that have given me the most to think about and reflect upon.

I will make no secret of the fact that I am not a fan of Manchester medical school and I shall attempt to explain why in the following paragraphs. However I don't want this to become a rant, and for this reason I have found it a hard post to write (this is my third attempt at doing so). So I would like to start by acknowledging how lucky I am to have received a medical school education and I realise that there are thousands out there who would give almost anything to do the course that I have just completed. I also accept that there were some things that were great about Manchester. For example, I loved the fact that we were given 10 weeks to produce a piece of clinical research at the end of year 4. I learnt a lot about myself and my future career from this. Also, the online course management system at Manchester (MedLea) is actually pretty good. The techs love to fiddle with it all the time but it works well and provides a great infrastructure around which the course is based. There are other aspects of the Manchester course that I could praise as well, including some fantastic members of staff. I do appreciate my time here, and I'm grateful for the opportunities that I have been afforded.

Right, now I'm going to talk about what I see to be some of the less good aspects of the course. Let's start with a fact. The medical school here is BIG. There are about 450 students in my year and this, in my opinion, is too many. We are split over four teaching hospitals. Three of these hospitals are in Manchester and one is in Preston (about 40 miles away). So we have four groups of students all being taught independently, however they are all under the banner of University of Manchester. It doesn't take a genius to see that there are going to be problems setting equal standards across the board in these cases. Each base hospital approaches things in a slightly different way and therefore there is considerable variation in what each batch of students are taught. Before writing this, I spent some time looking at exam results in each of the sectors and it didn't surprise me to see that the number of students failing the January exempting exam (final exam) was by no means evenly distributed across the four hospital sectors. From this it seems apparent that some students are receiving better teaching/advice than others and that doesn't seem fair to me, especially as all the students applied to the same university.

Another disadvantage of the university being so big is that it seems very impersonal. In St Andrews the staff knew each student by name and genuinely wanted to help us achieve our goals. In Manchester each student is seen merely as a number, another punter passing along the medical school production line. This has a huge impact on student satisfaction. According to last year's National Student Survey, Manchester is the lowest scoring medical school in the country for student satisfaction (61%, the next lowest is 67%). Medical students are like puppies, we like to feel loved, and at Manchester we are just one of the masses. The feeling that you get is one of "so what if you fail, there are plenty more where you came from". I feel that the best way that this problem can be solved is by cutting back on the number of students admitted, and making the medical school more small and personal. Perhaps the Preston students could break away from Manchester and form their own medical school? There is a decent university in Preston and I'm sure they wouldn't say no to a medical course in their prospectus.

This post is already reaching epic proportions so I am going to leave it there for now. I do have more to say though. In part 2 I will write about the teaching and organisation of the course here in Manchester. This will hopefully be up in a few days so check back soon.

Graduation

So there we have it, it's official. I am a doctor. Wednesday was graduation day and the piece of paper that I received means that I am now Dr Simon MBChB BSc (Hons).

Almost as importantly to me, graduation also signified that I am no longer a student. More specifically I am no longer a student of the University of Manchester. I'm halfway through writing an epic length post about my experiences of medical school but let's just say for now that, in my humble opinion, the course at Manchester leaves a LOT to be desired. I shan't be sad to say goodbye to this university at all.

When I graduated from St Andrews three years ago, only my mum and sister were able to attend. This time my dad managed to get the time off work so that he could come along as well, and it was nice to have both parents there. The day started with a trip to the "robing room" to collect my gown and hat before heading to a marquee for the medicine garden party. This was an excellent opportunity for photographs with friends and family and it was nice to catch up with some people who I hadn't seen since I went on elective back in March, as well as to meet my friends' families. My little sister (15) took advantage of the unattended alcohol and helped herself to the complimentary champagne. I've never been more proud of her, she's obviously preparing herself for student life early!

After the garden party, the first half of the year went to their ceremony whilst those of us with surnames in the second half of the alphabet had time for lunch. I also spent well over an hour queuing for my "official" photograph, which will soon be hanging somewhere in the hallway of my parents' house I'm sure.

The ceremony itself was rather underwhelming to be honest. I loved the pomp and ceremony of the St Andrews graduation ceremony. This was much more business-like in comparison. There was no singing of the "gaudeamus", and everything was in English rather than Latin. I was particulary disappointed with the graduation address, given by a high-up in the university. It served as no more than an advert for the university. The essential message was "well done, remember how great we are for giving you this degree, please give us donations in return". The address at the earlier ceremony was apparently even worse. The poor students were given a telling off, and lectured about all the people round the world who would never have the opportunity to study for a degree. I'm sorry but a graduation address is supposed to be the time to celebrate achievement, and these two speeches definitely dampened the mood a bit.

I managed to walk up the steps, shake hands with the presiding officer, and back down the stairs again without tripping up and very quickly it was all over. After taking an oath (a modern version of the Hippocratic oath), it was time to put our hats on and join the academic procession. It was really nice to see some of our old lecturers from St Andrews that had come down to see us graduate. They looked so proud when one of their ex-students stepped onto the stage. Another great idea was that the university broadcasted the ceremonies live on their website. This meant that my auntie in Australia was able to watch from her bedroom (it was 2am over there) and see me graduate.

On the whole I enjoyed my day and I will give credit to the university for doing a great job of organising it all. Whilst the ceremony wasn't to my liking, I guess that St Andrews was exceptional and that Manchester was the norm, and so I can't criticise really. I now have one more week of holiday before I start my shadowing on the 27th July. I am excited and terrified in equal measure!

A busy few weeks

Hi all, I am still here. I am not going to be one of the many who write one blog post and immediately get bored. However I have been incredibly busy these last couple of weeks and so blogging has had to take a back seat.

So what have I been up to? Firstly I spent a few days visiting the girlfriend (FutureHEMSDoc) before jetting off to Germany for a week's holiday. After getting back, I had barely 24 hours to tidy my flat and pack up all my stuff before handing over the keys. I am now living with my parents again which is a lot cheaper for me although I couldn't do it for too long (I walked in on my dad having a bath the other day - apparently locking the bathroom door isn't important to him).

In other news, I have been getting lots of exciting paperwork, the highlight of which has to be my letter from the GMC confirming that I now have provisional registration. It seems weird that some of these letters are addressed to Dr rather than Mr and it still makes me somewhat uneasy. It's not true anyway as I won't be a doctor until I graduate next Wednesday. But even then, I think it will take some getting used to before I accept that as my new title. I've seen some medical students who referred to themselves as doctors after passing finals in January and personally I don't like that at all. Similarly, one of the consultants I worked with in Australia tried to get me to introduce myself to patients as Dr, which I refused to do. Not only is it misleading to patients, it also comes across as being very arrogant.

Anyway, I now have a few days to myself before I start preparing for graduation and my move down south. Today has been a tidying day and I am taking great joy in emptying old drawers and cupboards and seeing what nostalgia I can find from days gone by. I will try to write a couple more posts this week. I have two in mind, one which is going to take some planning and will be rather long. I may make a start this evening assuming I don't get a better offer of something to do, so keep your eyes peeled and hopefully it should be out soon.

Simon