#hsfy

[medatlas]

Come learn from my HSFY mistakes in Med Atlas’s first post! 🥴 Link below 🩺 ~ medatlas.squarespace.com/medschool/the-four-mistakes-i-made-in-hsfy-and-how-they-cost-me-medicine ~

[starwars-n-study]

02-06-17

it’s coming near to the end of my first semester of second year at university! after doing hsfy last year, i didn’t quite make it into medicine so i am now aiming for graduate entry.

it’s been a hard semester. i’ve switched course entirely to a ba, which has included a lot of worrying about paper selection, not to mention the shift in thinking between the rote-learning, content-driven nature of hsfy and the more ruminative, self-driven approach to the arts. my grades so far have been fine, i only have two assessments (an exam and an essay) left before the end of semester.

i’ve decided not to resit my umat as my results last year were fine. i would rather focus on studying for this year, and worry about umat and possibly gamsat later.not gonna lie, it’s hard. i love what i’m studying, but it’s not ultimately what i want to do. it’s interesting, it’s stimulating, it’s exciting, but i know that this is just a step in my journey. i’m trying to keep things in perspective, though. it’s a long road ahead, and i’m almost halfway there!

[marvelman901]

Batman 419 (1988) Ten Nights of the Beast part 3 Written by Jim Starlin Penciled by Jim Aparo Inked by Mike DeCarlo Batman continued to try to stop the KGBeast... . #dccomics #dc #superhero #batman #comics #80s #jimstarlin #jimaparo #mikedecarlo #justiceleague #robin #jasontodd #beast #kgbeast #jamesgordon #kgb #russian #tennightsofthebeast https://www.instagram.com/p/B-pNjM-hsFY/?igshid=kwqrrhp0zdt9

[coppercorn-and-cauldron]

I may have reblogged too many med sci/med school posts on one of my side blogs. My sponsored, targeted, adds are getting real specific. As seen below.

And a bit mean, considering that it is possible that I would've been in my post-uni junior house officer year this year. If my brain hadn't decided to squish itself for no reason.

I had to pull out of my place in HSFY (health science first year, from which you apply directly to second year med after doing your UMAT) at Otago Uni before I'd even made it to class one. I developed idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH - which is chronically raised pressure in your head and spine due to too much cerebral spinal fluid. The symptoms often mimic a brain tumour).

Fuck you, useless brain.

It's highly unlikely that I'll ever be able to get back into the med school pathway (there's two here in NZ. School leaver entry which is direct out of highschool and post grad entry where you must have a 3-4 year uni degree of a minimum b to b+ average to apply. Both entry pathways do the same length of program). Even if I woke up in full remission tomorrow.

Partially because my brain can't brain anymore and I'll need to relearn all my highschool level stuff, math, lit, chem, bio, physics, stats. Org chem (fuck you for making me do org chem from scratch twice in my lifetime). Partially because I'd have to use a novel pathway and I'm not sure the entry regs for either med school will allow it. Even if I apply under rural entry and sign of a chunk of post uni years to working in rural areas.

In conclusion, aaaaaaaahhhhh.

I need to go google pictures of puppies, kittens, Tom Hiddleston, and houses that I cannot afford without a powerball win.

[medicineblr]

Hi, i'm a year 13 about to go into either HSFY or biomed. I had no idea you could go into med school after finishing a degree, i thought you could only complete first year and then apply for med school. How does that process work?

Hi! Yes so if you go to the uni website you’ll find more info there :) But basically yes you can either apply as a FY or a grad. In FY they take your grades for your 4 core papers into account for the gpa calculation, but as a grad they take your best 8 papers each year for 2 years. And its the same thing again: 60% gpa, 25% interview, 15% UCAT and you’re ranked against other grads. Also keep in mind that you can apply for medicine twice. I applied in my first year, got rejected then retried again as a grad :)

[ahrabiebarbie-blog]

Being a New Zealand Medical Student - How did I get there?

Hi everyone! 

So 1) This weather sucks for summer and 2) I am so bored and can’t wait to hurry on back to university! Since I have nothing to do, I thought it’d be good to get my tumblr game on and talk about my own experience of getting into medical school here in the South of the Southern Hemisphere. It’s really interesting seeing how it’s down around the world so I hope you guys enjoy learning how we kiwis do it! 

New Zealand medical schools give you entry via: 

a) Health Sciences First Year

b) Completing an undergraduate course 

c) Special entry (eg: people who have already worked in some aspect of the health field; nurses, paramedics, psychologists, physiotherapists) 

I got in via the competitive HSFY course. In 2015, I moved to the University of Otago and completed the course, involving seven compulsory papers (and I also did an optional eighth to boost my GPA) and an extra exam called UMAT (a kind of IQ/EQ assessment, simply put). So one difference I have noticed between NZ and other countries is that school grades don’t matter for getting into medical school (but is always nice for getting extra $$$ through scholarships, just saying). A overall grade is calculated with your exam marks contributing 2/3 and UMAT 1/3. Then you are ranked and a line is drawn once the top 300ish are found - scary stuff!! 

One thing I learnt right away was that you don’t stand a chance getting into medical school here without an A+ average...seriously! You might get away with lower grades for the other health courses, but I have yet to meet anyone in my batch who didn’t get A+. Furthermore, you had to have a pretty decent UMAT because it made up 1/3 of your final overall grade for getting a place but also what surprised me was that unlike your exam grades, your UMAT didn’t have to be perfect- I’ve met lots of people with a percentile of 50 which I think is nice to know because UMAT freaks out everyone so knowing that you don’t have to entirely ace it is kind of good. Still, to secure a definitive spot, there was immense pressure to still aim for a high percentile. Not only that- the first two sections of the UMAT are weighted with more importance in Otago than at the Auckland medical school - MORE PRESSURE! 

I won’t deny it was a LOT of work but at the same time, I could have chillaxed a lot more - I was one of those kids who just lived in their room or at the library for that whole year and didn’t socialise a whole lot, something I now regret a lot. Nevertheless, I made some amazing friends in HSFY and in med school also so I feel less guilty in some ways. 

As I approach third year, I’ve appreciated everything I’ve been given. It has been a wonderful ride at medical school and I know that realistically, things will be a lot different when I enter the working field. I am lucky though that we have had so many guests and doctors speak to us at lectures that I am fully aware of what I have signed my life into. If anything, I feel students need to know these realities BEFORE they even think about doing HSFY. This post I suppose is targeted at the future batches of students thinking of, or entering the competition of getting that spot in medical school. Please, if you are, sit down and think hard about whether or not you want to really be a doctor. Being a doctor is not how it appears to be on TV- it is a lot of hard (but rewarding) work, lots of time and life dedicated to other people and you shouldn’t subject to yourself to this career path if you don’t like the field or can’t imagine yourself handling the work (and don’t just do it for the money!!). On the other hand, if you know you definitely want to do it, then go for it! Use the future to motivate you to push forward through the hard yards of getting into medical school - the smiles of the patients you might one day save, the immense amount of extaordinary knowledge you will learn, to be involved at a time where the advances happening in medicine are amazing... HSFY or doing a degree first will be all worth it when you get in :) 

Over and out x 

[ask-bet-anon]

(Knightly can smack him and he'll die-)

SDHYUDSHYUDS&YDVSY&HSFY&SDVY&

She pokes him and he goes in a coma

[jiniretdoll]

https://instagram.com/p/BfSV_k-HSFy/

[coppercorn-and-cauldron]

Do you know how weak (mentally etc) I feel for letting chronic illness tank my chance at 1st-year premed and second year direct entry to med school? Hell, I got into Otago uni off the back of the rough equivalent of a G.E.D done at a community college (uni entrance qualification course done at my local TAFE in Oz).

Now, I logically know that a chronically squished brain and it's attendant cognitive, memory, eyesight, and exhaustion issues, is in no way able to handle a high demand hard science course. Which is why I withdrew from the place that I'd accepted in HSFY at Otago.

Emotionally I still feel weak and stupid for doing so. Med school here is 6 years. I would've been officially graduated by now and working as a junior house surgeon.

Instead, I'm sitting here doing nothing but low-key stressing that even if I woke up in full remission tomorrow, I'd still need to re-teach myself everything from highschool level on up. Because it's fucking gone. And I'm a bit salty that I'll have to learn organic chem from scratch for a second time in my life. But it's foundational knowledge for most early med school courses, so what are you going to do? *shrugs*

[toskana-nyc]

at Branford Place https://www.instagram.com/p/CLKyz1-hsfy/?igshid=usnhbz3t7fuu

[pylori23]

Awww. How cute is this?! I love my wolf pack so much! ❤️❤️😭😊 Thank you @danilakoor I’m all teary eyed now. #wolfpack #thestrongone #bestfriends (at Taylorsville, Utah) https://www.instagram.com/p/CCrp0E-hSFy/?igshid=avebqu3ypkme

[rocksolidmotivation]

Keep fighting @rocksolidmotivation . . . . . . . Tags #tuesday #tuesdaymotivation #tuesdayvibes #tuesdayvibes #motivation #motivational #motivationalquotes #inspiration #inspirational #inspirationalquotes #messi #thegoat #messimotivation #leomessi #leonalmessi #messiinspiration #footballmotivation #footballinspiration #messimotivational #successquotes #alonequotes #aloneinspiration #alonemotivation https://www.instagram.com/p/B7lhgr-Hsfy/?igshid=1ktimnkwvlzb2

[coppercorn-and-cauldron]

This^^^.

If i hadn't developed IIH just before I got into HSFY at Otago uni (and had to pull out before class/lecture one because of it) I possibly would've been a junior house surgeon this year (in NZ that's your first year as a doc after graduation from a 6 year med school course (qualification is a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB)).

[aucklandmed]

Hi! I’m studying HSFY at the University of Otago and I had a real shot on getting into med until I got my UMAT scores back. Ever since then, I’ve lost my motivation to keep going as I feel like all the hard work I’ve put in isn’t going to pay off anymore. I’m disappointed but I’m planning to get into med through post grad :) I was wondering if there are any advice you could give me to stay motivated for the next two years? What were the differences in the way you studied for UMAT over the years?

Hey anon, I’m really sorry to hear that :( I’m so glad that you’re not giving up. I know that it’s difficult, I’ve been there. But I also know that you can get through and get into med. The fact that it was possible and that people have done it (not getting accepted once but then being accepted) gave me motivation for myself.

There are some posts that I’ve written on this, so I’ll copy and paste them here for you :)

http://aucklandmed.tumblr.com/post/154748201222/what-about-next-year-even-worse-what-about-the

http://aucklandmed.tumblr.com/post/156904161832/hey-im-about-to-go-into-second-year-health-sci

http://aucklandmed.tumblr.com/post/156945009797/hi-im-moving-from-uoa-to-uoa-this-year-and-im

http://aucklandmed.tumblr.com/post/162489202757/hey-hope-your-first-semester-went-well-i-am

http://aucklandmed.tumblr.com/post/162816784342/dont-let-bad-grades-get-to-you

http://aucklandmed.tumblr.com/post/164384349917/how-i-study

http://aucklandmed.tumblr.com/post/165030481982/keep-calm-and-move-on-from-umat

Hope you find these helpful and motivating :) good luck for the rest of the year and feel free to message me if you have anything you’d like to talk about.

[raspberrystethoscope]

The path to being a doctor

I don’t come from a medical family - my parents both trained as lawyers, the first generation in each of their families to go to university. None of the family friends I knew growing up were in health (save for a great uncle’s wife who is a nurse).

If you don’t have people to talk to who have been there, it can be pretty tricky to understand what is actually involved to get from the Dean’s “welcome to medical school” lecture on day one, that walk across the stage in a funny hat five years later, to being a consultant in your chosen specialty several years after that.

I’m going to do my best to give a brief outline!

MB ChB

The medical degree is MB ChB or Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery. It’s an undergraduate programme that takes six years including Health Sciences First Year (HSFY). Everything I’ve written in here describes the Otago degree. Auckland structures things quite differently.

ELM (Years 2-3)

Early Learning in Medicine (ELM) is the name for Otago’s preclinical programme, the second and third years of your medical degree. Even if you didn’t have to complete HSFY, you are still referred to as being in second year medicine during ELM2. When saying it out loud, students call it “E-L-M” and not “elm” like the tree. Midway through ELM3 you’ll let the medical school know your preference for which campus you want to attend for ALM training.

ALM (Years 4-6)

Advanced Learning in Medicine (ALM) are the clinical years of your degree, years 4 and 5. For these years, the class is split between Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Much of the learning takes place in a clinical context at the hospital from which you’re based. For fifth year you can apply to join the Rural Medical Immersion Programme, training at a rural base hospital instead of your usual tertiary facility.

TI (Year 6)

Your sixth year is referred to as your “Trainee Intern” or “TI” year and you spend most of it working in a hospital. As part of this, you get to do an elective placement (most people go overseas). This is the first year you get paid (a little bit). It’s also the first year you’ll formally become a teacher (to younger medical students) as well as still being a student yourself. You’ll graduate at the end of this year, at which point you’ll get called a doctor.

House Officer (PGY1 and PGY2)

After graduation, you’ll complete two years of further on the job training as a House Officer (sometimes called an intern, especially overseas). People in medicine often refer to “PGY(n)” for “Postgraduate Year (n)” - which year you’re up to as a qualified doctor. Completion of this two year internship is required in order to get general registration with the Medical Council.

Registrar (PGY3+)

After finishing your House Officer years you’ll be eligible to apply for a specialty training programme. There’s a list of the specialties here. https://www.mcnz.org.nz/get-registered/scopes-of-practice/vocational-registration/types-of-vocational-scope/. The requirements for this will depend on the programme you decide to pursue. General practitioner training takes three years of specialty training (finishing in PGY5 at the earliest, while some programmes take as many as 6 (meaning you’ll finish in PGY8 at the earliest). A lot of training programmes will require you to move to a different town or city every year or so during this time.

It’s a good idea to have a look at the application process for any programmes you’re interested in while you’re still in medical school. These can be found on the websites for the College that runs the training programme. When you apply, they’ll generally take into account a variety of things to score your CV - these might include published research, previous higher degrees, skills training courses you’ve completed and time spent on rotation in your specialty of interest.

(It’s also totally fine to have no idea what you want to specialise in when you’re in medical school. I don’t know either).

Consultant

The New Zealand equivalent of an “Attending” which you might have heard on American television. You’ll be eligible to apply for this job after finishing specialty training, although my understanding is that some people go overseas to do further ‘fellowship’ type training beforehand - but don’t quote me on that!

Hopefully that gives a general overview of the path you might follow to become a grown up doctor, but I’m still a baby meddie myself so let me know if something needs correcting! 

This post is part in a series on surviving second year medicine. The list of posts (updated as new content is put up) is available here.

[nonadherence]

Hi Sebastian! I hope the new year is treating you well so far. I just started reading through the HSFY lectures you gave and I've started with Chem191 since you said it's one of the hardest ones. So far, I've found it so interesting and I would like to thank you soooo much for this! I'm reading through each lecture and I'm writing notes down as well as trying to understand the content. You are an angel and once again, THANK YOU

Hahaha no worries! I’m so sorry it took so long to reply! About now I would think you are preparing for the CHEM test! Good luck little healthsci! You can do it! If in doubt, and procrastinating, go to the library!