Hi, my name is Abishaik Gnanenthiran and I am a medical student at the University of Sheffield.
I recently finished my first-year exams and thought I would share my experiences of first-year medicine with aspiring medics in the RMBF community. It’s important to note that experiences will naturally vary between universities, with different teaching styles and course formats, but this gives a rough idea of what to expect!
At the University of Sheffield, there is an integrated teaching style, where we mainly focus on learning content but also have some clinical exposure, such as the Early Years GP programme.
We have lectures on physiology on various topics, from cardiovascular physiology to neurophysiology to skin physiology, allowing us to have an appreciation of multiple systems. We also have lectures on embryology and histology, the latter involving using computer microscopes to analyse tissue from various parts of the human body.
Sometimes it can be a pain waking up early to go to lectures, but I assure you that it is worth it in the long term to avoid falling behind!
One of my highlights was learning anatomy, which is covered completely in first year. While the University no longer does cadaveric dissection as of this year, we still had multiple ways of learning, including prosections, models, scans, wet specimens and more! It was a very fun, relaxed but informative time which many of us enjoyed.
In terms of clinical exposure, we had GP shadowing every two weeks. This involved us doing prep work in advance on a specific topic (e.g. stroke). Then during the GP session, we would do presentations and discuss what we had learnt. However, we would also often see patients who had these conditions, allowing us to develop our communication skills, experience what it is like talking to a patient, and learn how best to find out key information. The value of this is heavily emphasised at Sheffield, and we further developed these skills through a project which involved meeting patients at their homes, taking an in-depth history of their condition and their experiences. This was an eye-opening project, very interesting and very informative.
Overall, your first year will entail a lot of work and content learning, but it is manageable and there is plenty of time to be involved in clubs and societies, which I would highly recommend! It’s very different from school, and you learn a lot about being independent, learning how to balance time, learning which method of studying works best for you etc. My top tip is to try and stay on top of content from the start, but also leave plenty of time to relax and play sports, join societies and hang out with friends!
