#040206 – full guide to Aberdeen Medical SchoolHi, I'm Jack, a first year up at Aberdeen. I don't think any of you will recognise me but I was fairly active on the forum at this time last year. I haven't been back on here for a while, and I do think it's a shame that once people get through admission they just tend to forget about this place. I thought I might start a thread with some information about the course - really just things that I'd have liked to have known when I was applying last year.

Would that be helpful? I think I'll just do it anyway. Maybe like... in little bits. In case there's a whole other part of the site for this that I haven't seen and I ramble my heart out for nothing.

But if you let me, I will take you on a wonderful adventure through Phase I Medicine... (watch me make it sound more exciting than it actually is!)

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Sorry if you know a lot of this already, I'll start with the basics though, for those who don't!

First year is known as 'Phase 1' and, academically, consists of four courses: Basic Science For Medicine, Systems I, Systems II and Community Course. I'll go through these briefly individually.

Basic Science, as it is deceptively termed, comprises the 'basic' scientific knowledge needed to understand how the body works. It's really biochemistry and physiology, although these two disciplines are grouped into lectures on 'Cells & Molecules' and 'Tissues & Organs'. C&M contains a lot of the work included in Advanced Higher/A-level biology and chemistry, and goes into greater depth - the structure and function of proteins, how the body handles nitrogen, carbohydrates and associated energy transformations, the chemistry of water, cell structure... all that kind of stuff. T&O looks more at how the stuff studied in C&M helps the body to function, stuff like the basics of the nervous system, the formation of bone, structure of muscle, reflexes, etc - so it is more like 'physiology', C&M being more 'biochemistry'.

Basic Science is studied up until about mid-November.

Systems I is the first tour of the systems of the body, and includes four systems: the Cardiovascular System, the Respiratory System, the Alimentary System, and the Musculo-skeletal System. The CV system obviously looks at circulation and the role of the heart, and goes into quite a bit of detail about the electrical patterns which govern the heart's functions (more interesting than it sounds, honestly!); the resp. system looks at how breathing is achieved, the function of the lungs, delivery of oxygen to tissues, some common poblems associated with respiratory mechanics (emphysema for example, or pneumothorax (which you might have heard of if you watch ER a lot, like...erm...some of us)); the alimentary system looks at the digestive processes of the body (the other name for it is the GI system - gastrointestinal), it looks at the role of the oesophagus, the stomach, the intestines, excretion (oh yes) and how food is digested; finally, although you get a set of lectures under the heading 'The Musculo-skeletal System' it really is just anatomy, which is a major part of the course and is studied from the very beginning (see more later).

With the exception of the first few weeks in September, where the lectures take place around the main King's College campus in Old Aberdeen (nice surroundings, really handy - and I mean really handy if you live in Crombie-Johnston Halls as you can literally roll out of bed onto King's campus)... as I said, with that exception, most of the course is located at Marischal College in the centre of town. For information about Marischal (pronounced 'Marshall'), check out -->this<-- Wikipedia page.

If you walk under the entrance arch, across the main quadrangle and through a smaller archway at the back, then down a set of stairs with an iron gate at the bottom, you reach smaller quadrangle in the corner of which is a slightly sinister-looking set of black oak doors with the words 'ANATOMY' written above them. I'm being so descriptive to let you feel the slight eerieness of the place. We love it though. Deep down somewhere we are fond of it. It's here in the Anatomy Department that the rest of the year is spent (apart from the weekly parts of the course that are located elsewhere, eg Comm. Course).

There is the Anatomy Lecture theatre, which is... how shall I put it... not the most deluxe lecture theatre there ever was seen. More importantly though there is the DR, the dissection room, which I'll need more time to tell you about.

I need to go at the moment, so I'll continue this later! Not that you need to know this particularly, but it was my 18th last week, so I'm heading out. Actually I'll mention this as a word of advice: coming to uni at the age of 17th has some serious shortcomings, the worst of which is the fact that the Aberdeen matriculation cards have 'This person is not 18 until ...' written in red letters across them. Although to be honest there is a lot of work to keep up with so this may be a blessing in disguise!

I'll write more of this later, I'll talk about anatomy and what an average week is like. I'll also post an example of an exam question so you can see the kind of question you're gonna have to answer in, say, eight months. Scary stuff! (Again, I'm just giving the kind of information I would have appreciated during application)

Also, don't be worried if you get an initial rejection, I know probably about 5 people who were accepted late on having been rejected at first. It is early to talk about that but if it does happen to anyone, keep phoning and asking if there are spaces for reconsideration, especially when the results come out - there is proof that it works!I used the timetable for this very week as a template but altered it a bit to take into consideration the really sadistic few-weeks-in-late-October/November which kind of constituted a peak in the stressful-timetable experience, during the Basic Science course. In those few weeks the timetable was fuller than the one below but that was a one-off. Since then it has followed more or less the pattern shown below.

I'll fill you in about some things in the timetable before you start. Let me explain anatomy.

Anatomy (pointless heading)

The entire year (that's 180 people in my year, I think) is split into four groups, A B C and D, for anatomy and the subject is taught in two different rooms in Marischal College - the Dissection Room and the Science Lab. Each group receives one two-hour session in DR and one two-hour session in the Science Lab (as you will see below, two groups have anatomy at the same time, with one group in the science lab and the other in the DR - and they swap around later in the week; the situation is the same for the remaining two groups but at a different times).

The dissection room is a large room with big windows and a high ceiling and has an oak floor that's like a century old (we were told). All around the walls are large notice boards on wheels with say about six A4 sheets of paper with notes/information about the part of the body being study pinned up on them, including diagrams. In front of each board is a large table with lots of different models (some cadaveric, some prosthetic) of the relevant parts of the body.

It is in the middle of the room however that the true action takes place (that sounds so wrong but it's funny); here is where the cadavers are laid out on maybe about four or five tables, and there are about five medical staff (medical doctors and specialists in anatomy) around to help you when you're looking at the bodies, explain things and answer quiestions. Let's make it clear that in Aberdeen you do no dissection of the bodies yourself (trust me this is a good thing); they have already been opened up ('prosected') and we get to poke around them - lift things up to see veins and nerves etc. The Prosector (she does all the gory stuff and is pretty much in charge of the DR) is Dr Claire Lamb, and she's also there as one of the helping staff.

If anyone is worried about looking at dead bodies, don't be. It's amazing the looks of disgust non-medics give you when you describe your day, but really you get used to it so quickly and I'd say there's no one in our year who finds it a problem. Sure, it's not exactly pleasant (we're doing sexual organs at the moment) but it is interesting nonetheless. The embalming fluid used to preserve the bodies dries them out and discolours them so it's easier for you to treat them as scientific specimens and not 'oh god this was once a person yuck'.

The science lab contains no cadavers and has a similar layout, with the information on boards and tables of specimen (bones, skulls, models etc) most of which are prosthetic (the bones are real obviously). It also contains histology slides and notes (the one thing just about everyone hates) and also has two or three staff as helpers.

The students role in an anatomy session involves self-motivation; it's your responsibility to either make notes from the boards and diagrams or to go and listen to the staff and look around the bodies (it's much easier to absorb the information this way and as it's active learning it's FAR more interesting, although it does depend how you like to learn). All lectures that you will get for other courses (eg. Basic Science) are put on the internet for you to download and/or print off but the anatomy notes are NOT (annoyingly). I can vaguely see why they do it; no one will make you go to anatomy, and probably won't notice if you don't, so this forces you to go. All the information is also of course available in any good anatomy textbook. I'll give a list of the textbooks we use tomorrow, hopefully.

Anyway... onto...

Timetable

This what an average week is like. Note: Tuesday mornings are given over to the Community Course (explained later) although this only last from 10-12am, so the hour before and the hour after are free, though you will need to use them for travelling to and from Foresterhill (where the medical school is). Also, the Practical Anatomy session on Friday morning is an extra session which is open to everyone and includes, in small groups, either a Radiology (looking at X-rays) or a Surface Anatomy (feeling about yourself and others, ha) tutorial depending on the week, and these last half an hour.


Monday

9-10: Lecture 1
10-12: Practical Anatomy (Groups A and B)
12-1: Lecture 2
1-2: LUNCH
2-3: Lecture 3
3-5: Practical Anatomy (Groups C and D)

Tuesday

9-10: (Free)
10-12: Community Course
12-1: Private Study
1-2: LUNCH
2-3: Lecture 4
3-5: Practical Anatomy (Groups A and B)

Wednesday

9-10: Lecture 5
10-12: PBL Session
12-1: Lecture 6
(Afternoon free)

Thursday

9-10: Lecture 7
10-12: Practical Anatomy (Groups C and D)
12-1: Lecture 8
1-2: LUNCH
2-3: Lecture 9
3-5: Private Study

Friday

9-10: Lecture 10
10-12: Practical Anatomy (all groups), includes Surface Anatomy/Radiology tutorials
12-1 Lecture 11
1-2: LUNCH
2-3: Tutorial (certain groups)
3-4: Tutorial (remaining groups)

Permission to use the above article has been sought. The information was originally posted on newmediamedicine.com

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