First Days

We've had lots of introductory lectures during the past two days. Yesterday we had introduction to assessment where we learned that we are assessed on the areas of behaviours, skills and knowledge and medicine is not just about passing the exams but learning to be a good doctor. Obviously the patients safety is the most important thing so we can only pass if we are competent.

Then we had an introduction to the dissecting room (DR) and went there to see a cadaver for the first time. We only saw the upper limb and thorax (that's arm and chest in my previous language but we're encouraged by our anatomy teachers to speak in anatomical terms). It was okay, nobody fainted and the way in which the cadavers are preserved means they do look quite different from live bodies. It didn't smell too bad. Apparently formaldehyde is an appetite stimulant so when you leave the DR it's totally normal to feel hungry. Strange but true!

This morning we had our foundation case lecture on cystic fibrosis which had been re-arranged form last Friday. It included watching a video with John Cleese and a man who presented a science program in the 1970's and a man from The Goodies. It gave some of the very basic details about CF and then we were lectures more about the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator which is a transmembrane protein in the cell which is often mutated in CF.

Then I attended an IT session on using a program called the virtual human dissector which is a fantastic piece of software which has cross sectional views of the entire body and each structure in the cross-section is labelled. We use this to learn the cross-sectional views through the body and where they correspond on a 3D actual body. The whole thing is based on something called the virtual human project (I think) which was done at Columbia uni in the states (don't quote me) and used the frozen body of a consenting prisoner.

Finally today we had our first sociology-type lecture and was introduced to my tutor group for this module. On the whole everyone was very quiet and our tutor let us go 45minutes early. I bit a bit disappointed by this (sad, I know) but when you're paying £3225 you want every minutes worth! We were all supposed to prepare something to teach the rest of the class in 2-3 minutes. I'd prepared the notes on a musical stave and another guy taught us a few Swahili words as he'd spent three months in Kenya but nobody else had done anything. Which i though was pretty poor. never mind- I hope that our next session is more of a success and we actually discuss something! (I'm very opinionated, don't you know!)