Year Guide: First Year
General Tips
Our 8 First Year Tips:
1) Textbooks – In short, don’t buy them before coming to uni! By the time you’re half way through the first term, you’ll have a much better feel for what you need, and which books suit you best. If you’re interested though, or if you absolutely feel the need to break into that student loan, here are some common themes:
Books most first years end up buying:
- Anatomy textbook – Either Gray’s Anatomy for Students or Clinically Oriented Anatomy (Moore and Dalley). The two are very different, so use library copies of both for a while before deciding on your favourite.
- Anatomy atlas – Very useful for revision – there’s really no other way to do it. The most used is by Rohen, Yokochi and Lutjen-Drecoll, and is very good.
Books you should never buy:
- SCAMBLER – See next point (that’s right, it’s that important: not buying this book is one of the top 8 pieces of advice we can give you!)
- Any huge biochemistry text – Lecturers will frequently push books such as Devlin or Stryer. These go into far more detail than you will ever need, and you’ll never open them again after your first six months. If you want something for reference, Instant Notes in Biochemistry is very comprehensive, and will actually fit in your bag!
- Oxford Medical Dictionary – it’s not a bad book, it’s very good. That’s why the MDU give it to you FREE when you join (see tip 3 for more details).
2) Beware Scambler! – Under no circumstances buy the Scambler book that they will keep recommending to you… you will never use it. Any other book that is recommended you will need so infrequently you can make do with the library copies.
3) Join the MDU and MPS (medical defence associations, in case a patient tries to sue you) when they visit the med school. They are FREE to join (every students favourite word) and they give you good freebies, typically a pocket ‘Introduction to Clinical Examination’ and the ‘Oxford Medical Dictionary’. For this reason, DON’T buy a medical dictionary before you go to med school as having 2 just takes up space in your room!
4) Fancy Dress – Take all the fancy dress bits and bobs you have to uni with you… virtually every medic event will have a fancy dress theme, and having to buy things gets expensive! So dig out your old toy doctors/nurses kit, bring along that hawaain skirt and anything else you think may be useful (by the end of first year virtually everyone has a dressing up box again!!)
5) Make use of your medic parents, who you will be told about in your first couple of weeks. They should feed you at least once, they will have textbooks they may lend you, they will buy you drinks (in the case of some parents they will get you horrendously drunk) and will generally be willing to offer bits of useful advice.
6) Buy a stethoscope at the first opportunity once at uni… you don’t really need one in 1st year (although it is helpful on GP placements) but money’ll get tighter as the course goes on so you may as well buy it early! Furthermore, there are usually plenty of deals floating round early in the year – talk to Galenicals for more info. Top tip: Once bought, under no circumstances take it out when in fancy dress… you will lose it!
7) Work and Play – Go in with the attitude you are no longer going to be the best… as one prof is fond of saying, “The average Bristol medic is exceptional”. Therefore do not be surprised if you no longer get merits/distinctions/come top… besides, if you are really making the most of your uni experience, some would argue you should not be coming top…
8) Enjoy it, and grasp all the opportunities you get given!! I particularly recommend getting involved in medic sport (if female go for womens football if you can’t really do sport but fancy an excellent social life!) and the Revues, as you’ll get to mix with other years and generally have a lot of fun!
Tips on surviving the preclinical years of the course – what to expect, what’s useful (and what’s not). Find out how other medics revised for exams, how merit students managed it, and which textbooks and websites were useful.
A personal experience of first year, with advice on everything from socialising and activities to surviving each term and set of exams.
Module Tips
Got something useful you dont mind sharing? Send it to us at webmaster@galenicals.org.uk!
