Hey Sassa,
When you were studying for USMLE and taking the courese, did you find a lot of content to be new or unfamiliar due to the lack of lectures at limerick.
Or did you find that studying PBL via the cases and some lectures were sufficient enough to help you study for USMLE?
Also can you help me differentiate between a core, elective and observership? For example, my understanding is that a core in pediatric is purely classes while an elective is where you go into a pediatric department and work on real clinical cases and an observership is like shadowing a physician.
Last question is that Ive read about how you need to complete your cores before that applying for that specific elective. At limerick, do you finish all your cores in time to arrange for electives summer of 3rd year so that you can get LOR for residency?
I'm still studying for the USMLE Step 1. There is no way you could get all the knowledge through just lectures and PBL cases alone. From what I understand though, you wouldn't get that from didactic lectures either. I think most people spend 6-8 weeks hermiting doing Qbank questions if you didn't do stuff through the year with a traditional school? The detail is just too great.
I would say that PBL helps me more than lectures, and you remember things based on "that myasthenia gravis case" or "like we did with the Jane Smith case last term". It helps brain-link it together. But like I've mentioned, I'm not a lecture person, and I don't often go to ones I won't pay attention to. I learn best by doing, so PBL works. As I mentioned before as well, in 2nd year, many classmates are taking the USMLE in the summer and we all go into way more detail than those that don't - so you're still constantly pushed.
Observership - you watch, and don't touch (generally, depends on the doctor or hospital you're doing it with). It doesn't count towards residency applications. However, who you do an observership with can lead to an elective which WILL count.
Core - What you need to pass your schooling. These are your clerkship placements set out as part of your curriculum for accreditation. They vary from 3rd and 4th year and must be done in Ireland. You get your placements in 2nd year. Third year you do GP, medicine and surgery. 4th year you do med, surg, paeds, obs and psych + a research SSM that you can do anywhere and do an elective or something back home at the same time.
Elective - something you do on your own time, over Christmas or summers or your SSM period. These are your tickets to the US or Canada and where your reference letters and extra experience comes from.
Your last question has a bit of a vague answer. Last year, the schedule changed to allow for less missed time for interviews because people were flying back and forth and missing placement and that threatened accreditation hours. Your elective times are summer after 3rd year and winter / Christmas of 4th year. You are placed into different groups (A-F) and depending on your group, you may have your cores (psych, paeds, obs) done before you need. However, you might not. My roommate really wants paeds so this was an issue. The school has told her that for her elective application, they will support her in saying though she hasn't completed the elective between 3rd and 4th year, she will have seen X,Y,Z in her GP and med/surg rotations (she's going to give the elective a shot in the summer even though many schools don't take 3rd years for electives anyway). She will have done the paeds rotation before Christmas of 4th year though, so she won't need provisions then for over the Christmas break elective.
Lots of information, hopefully it's not too confusing.
