Life as a clinical student in NZ/OZ

[goldfish]

Can someone tell me what are the responsibilities that a clinical student has in NZ/OZ?
How much time do you spend on studying vs in hospita and how much teaching do you guys get?

I suppose it will differ from uni to uni but i'd like to hear some experiences.

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[yublocka]

Can someone tell me what are the responsibilities that a clinical student has in NZ/OZ?
How much time do you spend on studying vs in hospita and how much teaching do you guys get?

I suppose it will differ from uni to uni but i'd like to hear some experiences.

Is a clinical student same as a med student? I'm a first year at Sydney Uni, and right from week 1, we spend one day per week at our allocated hospital (for year 1 and year 2), with the other 4 days at uni. Year 3 and 4 you are pretty much at the hospital full-time.

Hope that helps!
Tamara

 

[goldfish]

Is a clinical student same as a med student? I'm a first year at Sydney Uni, and right from week 1, we spend one day per week at our allocated hospital (for year 1 and year 2), with the other 4 days at uni. Year 3 and 4 you are pretty much at the hospital full-time.

Hope that helps!
Tamara

actually what i meant by clinical student is the 2nd half of medical education. i.e. the rotations in hospital wards

flindophile:
may i ask which uni you are from?

 

[Pianoman]

I'm a 5th year student in the 6 year programme at the University of Auckland in NZ

Responsibilities varies hugely between rotations. Sometimes we are sent to evaluate and work up patients by ourselves, a lot of the time we function as space occupying lesions at the back of a 3 hour ward round.

Generally I think students in the hospitals around Auckland get very good clinical exposure with opportunities for a lot of patient contact and practise of procedural skills. A lot depends on how enthusiastic you are as a student. The more you ask the more you get to do. If you like going home to sleep then that's fine too.

As far as teaching goes, in the hospitals there is generally scheduled clinical teaching for the med students each week. Again this completely depends on the rotation you are on. Some are better than others.

Study outside of the hospital? Currently we are near the start of the year so apart from things like case reports, assignments etc, study is basically zero. But that's because I'm lazy. When the big nasty exams at the end of this year start to get closer its gonna be all study, no life.

Hope this is helpful

 

[goldfish]

a lot of the time we function as space occupying lesions at the back of a 3 hour ward round.

nice to know that there are other students that feel that way in the wards

Study outside of the hospital? Currently we are near the start of the year so apart from things like case reports, assignments etc, study is basically zero. But that's because I'm lazy. When the big nasty exams at the end of this year start to get closer its gonna be all study, no life.

Hope this is helpful

what kind of assignments do u get?

 

[Pianoman]

Assignments are pretty variable

I've just been doing geriatrics and we had to do a detailed write up on the multi-disciplinary management of a rehab patient as well as present a short seminar on a topic related to geriatrics (I got to do faecal incontinence )

On other attachments we have to do critical appraisal of journal articles, case write ups etc. Just the standard stuff, all pretty straightforward so everyone gets good marks if they make even a small effort.

 

[pitman]

you get a blank look if you ask an Australian to name the best medical school. They will usually respond with, "They are all pretty good, I reckon."

This is spot on...VERBATUM what i've gotten. Some have opinions on this but they're few and far between, plus there's virtually no data to encourage such comparisons. I think this will change in the next couple years though, as schools marketing to a limited supply of int'l students (and even to domestic students as more competing schools keep opening up) will realize they need to release various stats. UQ is starting to do that now.

-pitman

 

[sjkpark]

Assignments are pretty variable

I've just been doing geriatrics and we had to do a detailed write up on the multi-disciplinary management of a rehab patient as well as present a short seminar on a topic related to geriatrics (I got to do faecal incontinence )

On other attachments we have to do critical appraisal of journal articles, case write ups etc. Just the standard stuff, all pretty straightforward so everyone gets good marks if they make even a small effort.

Me too! (I have no idea who you are though, whereas my login name's pretty obvious. ) Had a real good time doing geriatrics at Middlemore. We did dementia, somebody did drugs in elderly in "Who wants to be a Geriatrician" format, which was very entertaining.

You gotta try pretty damn hard to FAIL the assignment component of clinical run (e.g. not handing it in). As long as it is obvious that you made some effort to do the assignment, you'll get a decent mark.

General rule is, if the run has a big OSCE at the end (e.g. orthopaedics), the assignment load is not onerous. If the run doesn't have a big OSCE, you have to spend quite a bit of time writing up case histories, doing log books (e.g. psychiatry in 4th year, geriatrics in 5th year - both are cruisy runs but they would expect a lot more in your case histories than the orthopods). The exception is general medicine in 4th year, in which you have to submit 6-8 case histories during your 6 week run AND have an OSCE as well.