Physiology Intercalation

Why Physiology?
Before deciding on intercalating, it’s important to think about what you want to get out of your intercalated year. A science degree will give you an enhanced understanding of pre-clinical teaching, experience of the world of scientific research and important skills for if you decide to embark on your own research at some later stage in your career.

Intercalating in Physiology allows you to explore ideas touched upon in pre-clinical medicine in a lot more detail. As Physiology underpins our pre-clinical systems teaching and is broad enough to correspond to a large part of our clinical teaching, it’s one of the subjects most relevant to our future career. Physiology at Bristol is a well-established and well-respected course, so it’s a good solid science degree if you’re thinking of research at some point in your career or you just want to study in more detail a related biomedical science.

What will I learn?
The main areas of research at Bristol are cardiology, neuroscience, cell signalling and cell biology. The modules on offer reflect the areas of expertise within the department, and you can be assured that each series of lectures will include groundbreaking, often unpublished research from Bristol’s scientists. The level of teaching within these areas is outstanding, but rather specific, so if you’re hoping to learn about an area outside of this, you will be disappointed. In addition, the lectures tend to go into a depth you didn’t think previously possible, without necessarily providing a good overview.

The year consists of four, 5 week teaching blocks, within which you have the choice of 2 elements. The element choices for 2007/2008 were as follows:

1.A Membrane Function In Behaviour & Disease
1.B Muscle, Motility & Migration
2.A Neuroscience Of Hearing & Deafness
2.B The Heart In Health & Disease
3.A Brain & Behaviour
3.B Medical Genomics
4.A Neuroscience Of Pain
4.B Cardiovascular System In Health & Disease

The element teaching forms the bulk of the course, and you’ll be expected to do a fair amount of reading outside of the lectures, so it’s important to choose something that interests you.

The research project
The research project counts for up to 26% of your final mark, and takes up at least two days of your weekly timetable. Projects fall broadly into three categories:

‘wet’ – laboratory based
‘dry’ – analysis and interpretation of somebody else’s data
UAS – Undergraduate Ambassador Scheme – research or teaching in local secondary schools.

These are usually based around the areas of expertise in the department, so may overlap somewhat with some of the element teaching. Officially, you have two days allocated lab time each week. Depending on how your project goes, you’ll find you’ll spend more or less time in your lab (probably more). The final project is an 8,000-word report on your findings, comprising 18% of your final mark, so be prepared for some late night lab sessions as the dissertation deadline draws near!

The research project is your opportunity for independent work, and you will inevitably become an expert at the intricacies of research in that area. If it goes well, you may find yourself up for publications, conferences and prizes. In most cases however, the likelihood is that most of your results will be “non-significant” (p>0.05!). This is unbelievably frustrating, given the hours you will put in to your research project, but at least you’ll have lots to talk about in your “Discussion” section!

It can be hard to know which projects to go for, as the supervisors can put a positive spin on the most mundane of topics, so what seemed like a highly clinical and technical project, is actually just counting cells. Talking to previous students to find out what you can about the supervisors, previous year’s results and a bit more about the topic can help you avoid the bad projects!

Concepts & Techniques
In addition to element teaching, the department of Physiology runs, together with the department of Anatomy, a course on scientific principles, called Concepts and Techniques. Within this you will have teaching on:

• Paper Review & how to write a library project
• Philosophy Of Science & Public Engagement in Science
• Statistics & data presentation
• IT skills

It’s fair to say that Concepts & Techniques is the bane of most people’s lives during their intercalated year, but it’s actually one of the most useful things you’ll do. Aside from your lectures, it’s your real chance to see how science as a field works and what makes research good or bad. Although it might not seem like it at the time, these are the skills, more than anything that you will take forward to medicine, when doing SSCs or Epi in 4th year, so do your best to get through the statistics lectures – it will all be worth it!

How is the course run?
A typical weekly timetable for a Physiology student, would involve 3 hours of element teaching on Mondays and Wednesdays, 3 hours of Concepts & Techniques teaching on Tuesdays, and Thursdays & Fridays in the lab. Not as much as Medicine, but much more than International Health!

How is it different to Medicine?
Such is the volume of information to be transferred in Medicine, there’s rarely chance to explore any deeper than an initial understanding of Physiology and what can happen in disease. Studying Physiology at this level gives you a chance to learn how research has brought us to this level of knowledge and to question what’s really going on. You soon realise that facts are rarely as clear cut as they are presented to us in medicine, and behind each minute piece of information, there may be dozens of research teams worldwide arguing over a seemingly pointless detail! More than anything, you learn not to take anything you’ve learnt in medicine for granted.

The level of teaching in third year Physiology will be a shock to the system. Bursting lecture theatres full of 250 bored medical students where you can quietly shrink into the background are replaced by seminar rooms comprising no more than 30 students. As a result the environment is much more interactive and you need to be up to speed to get the most out of your seminars. Don’t panic if you find it tough at first. I certainly did, and nothing really fell into place until just before the exams!

Rather than covering a broad range of material as you have done in Medicine, you may spend entire lecture series focussing on one ion channel, which can be frustrating and pointless if you’re not that interested and it’s a topic that you’re unlikely to use it again. On the other hand, for the topics that do interest you, you’ll have up-to-date knowledge on the most recent research in that area. What’s more you may be learning about advances at the forefront of modern technology, such as advances in gene therapy, which have a real clinical application that you can take forward into medicine.

Will I find it hard to catch up with the other Physiologists?
Not really. It’s true that Physiology students may have learnt some things in more detail than you, and so they may have an initial head-start in some topics. However, they will not have covered the same range as you. As a medic, you’ll have covered a broader base of biomedical sciences as part of your pre-clinical teaching, so you’ll probably find yourself better able to cope with the course as a whole. A basic knowledge of Physiology is assumed, but beyond that, it’s a waste of your time to do a lot of preparation work before hand.

How is it assessed?
The year consists of several formative (don’t count) and summative (do count) assessments. The big ones are:

• Project Review Essay (5%) – due in just before Christmas, this is a 2,500 word review of the literature surrounding your research project
• Second Library Project & Poster (7.5%) – 2,500 essay just like an SSC
• Dissertation (18%) – 8,000 word report on your research project findings

What about the exams?
Unfortunately, just being able to recite Costanzo is not enough to do well in the exams, and you will be expected to have read key journal articles recommended in lectures to supplement your essay answers. Each element is examined in two parts, with either a data interpretation, experimental design or paper review component, accompanied by an essay question.

Who?
You and around 20 other intercalating medics, vets and possibly the odd dentist will join around 40 undergraduate physiology students. Essentially, you become a physiologist for the year and you’ll have limited contact with the medical school.

What do I wish I’d known before hand?
Don’t panic if it doesn’t make sense at the start! Physiology isn’t meant to be easy, and if you’re anything like me, there will be times when you don’t understand a thing in the seminars and you want to pack it all in and go straight back to medicine. But rest assured, it will all come together in the end and you’ll probably find you do very well indeed – a high proportion of intercalating medics get First class degrees!

Intercalating in Physiology is NOT a year off, and from February onwards, you will work harder than you’ve ever worked before! If you want an easy year with a slack timetable, choose something else.

The pros:

• Long holidays
• Extra year of university
• New friends – medics & physiologists
• The BSc at the end of it
• Physiology is general enough to apply to whatever you do in future
• MTAS points
• Skills learnt will make certain parts of medical course (eg SSCs) much easier!
• Teaching and supervision from world renowned scientists
• Opportunity for publication, prizes and conferences
• Concepts & Techniques (only offered with Physiology or Anatomy)

The cons

• Concepts & Techniques (a pro and a con)
• Reading journal articles
• Expensive
• A lot of work and extra pressure
• Getting left behind by other friends who go straight to clinical

Would I do it again?
YES! But it’s hard work, so I’m glad I don’t have to…