@PinkPrincess2014
So Learning Basic Medical Sciences or as well used to call it LBMS is pretty pointless. It honestly was really easy. It was an hour a week. It was basically a sort of “misc” class where different people from different careers came and gave talks, we did like case studies that were way over our heads for the time (like a patient comes in what do you want to do sort of a thing), and that’s pretty much it. Doesn’t really add anything to your life.
Med term would be useful I guess if I had studied it. Its basically learning all the latin roots of medical words so if you don’t know a word you can easily figure out what it is.
And then you have to pick out like 10 words per week or something and then record yourself online describing all 10 words to the teacher. Like just say the definition. It’s stupid cuz its words like dyspnea and cholecystectomy. You’ll know what they mean once you get to medical school and start classes, it doesn’t really add anything to your life either.
Year 1-2 docent is actually very different based on who you have. They are “supposed” to make you go into patient rooms and ask them why they came in and get a basic medical history from them each week and then report back to you docent. Some teach you how to put on casts, how to suture, how to scrub for a surgical case, etc, but you are so far away from using it that it really doesn’t mean much. Some also have a year 3-6 docent unit, so if they are on DoRo will have you shadow the docent team and go to rounds for that morning. That would have been kinda cool I guess, but then it just becomes a massive group of people blocking the hospital hallway like a clot and it always annoys the eff out of everyone else.
You have the same docent for all two years. Year 1 you have your internal medicine docent for once a week and you also have you psychiatry docent for once a week. When you hit year 2, that psych part goes away. So you’ll only have docent once a week.
Fundamentals is just annoying. First of all, I don’t know how it is will be for you guys but for us, it was from like 3-5 pm on a Friday. Who the heck does that? It was pure torture and it is mandatory attendance.
Secondly, you get lectures on stuff that is way over your head, like management of hypertension in pregnancy, pediatric screening exams and milestones and when you get what test, basics of a physical exam of the newborn. Each fundamentals has a different theme. I think first one was geriatrics, second one is pediatrics, third one is gynecology, and fourth one is general internal medicine. You have a final exam at the end, which is basically rogue memorization of the power point lectures that are given to you in class. Its rogue memorization because you have not had the basic science knowledge or the patient experience yet to put everything that you are learning into context. This is where a lot of people end up “extending”. Because they don’t study for the final. Its not really hard per say, we all studied like two days before and usually 1-2 people fail. Most that failed either didn’t study or didn’t sleep or some reason like that.
I would say, yea they are teaching you medicine, cuz a lot of that stuff is stuff that we got lectures on in our core rotations year 5. But again, that’s like so far way it doesn’t really matter at that time.
The weird thing is that everything that you learn and then forget will all be repeated to you later in your education. With the appropriate rotation, course, etc. Its just meant to introduce it to you. I see what they are trying to do here, but it really doesn’t impact your life that much.
It used to be that all of us would just bring our laptops and then sit there and text each other, shop online, and get on Facebook, but they banned laptops after fundamentals two for us, so we actually had to listen. But in that case, we all just brought our notes to class and sat in the back and studied for our next exam.
I will say two things:
- It’s hard for me to judge whether or not it helped me to have previously seen all of that information before when I learned it again later in medical school. Maybe it did make it easier to absorb stuff the second time around, but I don’t really know.
- I’m not the typical like listen to the lecture, take notes, be interested in what they are saying kinda person. So i’m probably not the best example of the behavior you should emulate. More than 50% of the students in our class sat there and actually paid attention. Whether or not they liked it is a different story. (Hint: they didn’t).
It doesn’t really take up that much time, its like 3 hours a week total in classes that are sort of medical but don’t really matter at that time. After Year 1 first semester (after LBMS and med term is over) its really only fundamentals.
In terms of real advantage in residency match: NONE. Zilch. Nada.
!