Not many people fail in medical school

Hello!

Hells bells - can't believe it has been a year. Thank you very much to those of you who have emailed me to ask how I am getting on.


Well - to bring you up to date - I am now half way though my second year which is unbelievable. I have (Just this week) started my clinical training in my first junior rotation in psychiatry. It has been an absolute slog to get here and I think that this is why I stopped writing these posts. The other reason was that I didn't pass everything that I needed to pass and so ended up in what my medical school calls "A qualifier"

On my first day at medical school, the Dean told the audience of 400 or so students, that in four or five years time, 95% of us would be doctors. The reality is that in medical school, most people pass all the exams that are thrown at them. If you, like me, are in the small group that does not pass everything - it is not pleasant.

In February, the students on the five year course did their pre clinical exams. Out of 372 students, 82 failed one or more exams and ended up in the qualifier. In my cohort of graduate entry, 50 sat the pre-clinicals and twelve of us ended up in the qualifier.

Being in the qualifier means that you have to do the whole lot of exams again - even the stuff that you passed. Personally, I passed the clinical exam and one of the written papers, but failed the second written paper. I then had three weeks to study my arse off before sitting the whole lot two weeks ago. Thank God - I passed, and so was allowed to progress to my clinical training. Eight of my fellow qualifieees have not been so lucky and are now off the course.

Having been at this now for eighteen months I have formed some strong opinions on doing medicine as a mature candidate. From what i can see, if anything goes wrong in your life whilst studying medicine, the odds for failing rocket. I think that this is the case for any subject but graduate entry medicine does not allow any buffer for illness, turmoil or wanting to have a life. As you probably know, graduate entrants do the preclinical training in eighteen months instead of 2.5 years. Despite what you may have heard, we do exactly the same modules as the five year lot, (Well apart from a bit of Head and Neck studies, but what's a mandible between friends) so over the three semesters our workload is 33% greater than the five years students.

Some of you might be reading this, thinking that people who fail and end up in the qualifier are there because they haven't worked hard. This is BS - we worked hard, but just not hard enough!
Anyway - enough about qualifiers and stuff - I passed the shitty thing so I made it!! I have no more exams until February 2009. Whohoooooooooooo!!!!!!!