The complete guide to choosing your UK MEDICAL SCHOOL

hi guys my name is james i'm a third year medical student studying at the university of liverpool and today we're going to look at which university should i choose [Music] if you haven't done already like and subscribe to the channel for future updates on what i'm going to do my life is a medical student and more tips and tricks on university and lifestyle fitness and all that kind of stuff as well the video is going to be split up into three different parts there's the first is the timeline of medical school and becoming a doctor the second part is how to get to each stage what stages what sort of exams and tests you have to do and parts to get into the different stages and finally it's going to be which university should i choose based on that information so if you want to just skip to the bit that you want to view there will be time status in the link below and if not join me for the rest of it so point number one so the timeline of from a medical student to a doctor is simply five to six years of medical school stuff you then have two years of foundation training up to about eight years of specialty training and then you finally become a consultant from the end of medical school you are classed as a doctor and you'll be in that foundation training essentially trying to decide what speciality you want to go into in those two years uh in a specific area of the country rotating around a couple of hospitals when you're in specialty training you're essentially training in one narrow field of medicine or surgery that you want to do and that'll be what you'll be doing for the rest of the time and really get into the nitty-gritty parts of that so point number two how do we get onto each of the different stages so throughout medical school you'll have uh exams at the end of each year that will contribute towards f pass points now half of those points will be decided through your end of year exams the other half is sat in one exam at the end of the time you are a student so that's called the sjt it's a situational judgment kind of test and like i said half of your points are on that exam half your points of your whole degree it's on that exam so it's quite a big exam that you have to say and those points said rank you in the country from all different medical schools about where you are in the country so no matter which university you go to it won't be put on there and you'll be ranked and that ranking score is determined is then used to determine where you're going to go for your foundation two years so you choose a foundation and the country splits up into dnase essentially uh almost like counties in the country you rank which counts you want to go to or dwee that you want to go to and the hospitals that you want to go in there the higher the points you have essentially the more likely you are to have the choice possible that you want to go to the choice of area that you want to go to for those two years i can't stress enough that the university you go to isn't included on that ranking score and even if it is it doesn't really matter because let's say you went to a top university and you're down at the bottom doesn't really reflect very well either so those ranking scores are then used for your two years of foundation and where you want to go so you're in foundation you've done your placements you've decided what you want to do you then have to go on to specialty training and now this is a bit more complicated so you have an interview multiple different interviews you have to provide a cv an academic cv of all you've done so things from research audits projects poster presentations publications uh your exam results that you've had in other tests that you have to set for your specific speciality so there's very speciality exam that you have to pass and then yes all those combined to create your spaces now these are very competitive spaces if you choose certain specialties certain surgical specialties are very limited places uh they could be less than 10 in the whole country for some specialities uh others are a lot more copious and there's a lot more of those but some of them are very competitive so you can't just do well on exams you have to do other stuff alongside that like i mentioned research projects publications as well so those will contribute to that and if you do well in that and get enough of those other points that you have to give you to do your certain specialty you go on to that then specialty you then have similar exams and then you become a consultant at the end so point number three how do i choose my uni and i've got to split this up into three different parts about what main things you could you should consider there's going to be lots of other things that you should take into consideration but these are the main ones the first one is look at the course so there's a variety of different courses out there from traditional which is three years of um sort of pre-placement where you you have just uh lastly physiology the science aspect of medicine and then you have uh usually a master's course and then you have a placement placement for two years to then put all what you've learned into practice and that's usually at places like oxford cambridge uh i think other universities do it like imperial correct me if i'm wrong with that one though um so yeah those are that's one of the types the second type cbl and spiral curriculums which are the things that i'm doing if you want to know a bit more about that i've done a separate video about what to expect at the university of liverpool on years one to three is a really detailed video summarizing every different aspect of your course and what you get assessed on in each different stage and that will be linked in the video as well you also have things called problem based learning now these are getting phased out quite quite quickly actually so are we surprised if anyone is going to still do that and then the universities are still doing that but yeah problem-based learning isn't really a thing anymore so those are mainly your two different types point number two where do you want to go where do you want to live in the country it's a massive massive factor i would recommend visiting the place get a feel for where you are gives a feel for the accommodation but not just the accommodation of where they put you for undergrad but also the area where you're going to be living in terms of the typical student area and have a look at that and maybe try and get in contact with as many people as you can from different unis who are studying not just medicine but anywhere any course get people you know and ask questions go on student forums go on online websites get a feel for what it's really like living in the place and how much other stuff that the city has to offer number three this is very important and it's something that i didn't really um consider when i was looking at my unis is workload i used to think that all unis we're gonna give you the same amount of work and you're gonna have to do the same thing no matter what uni you go to that's not the case uh my union liverpool is probably about a medium workload they provide they they expect you to do a lot of stuff they expect you to learn a lot of things especially to have lots of seminars lots of other things there's loads of stuff going on you are very busy however it's not quite your cambridge and your oxford and your very competitive unis they are going to have a considerable amount more to learn than what we do and i know because i've got friends who are there and i've got know what kind of stuff they have to learn um so if you're very driven and you want to know as much as you can you really want to push yourself and by all means go for those unis and you'll probably have a brilliant time there if you want to be able to do other things like uh really focus on sport focus on research projects and audits and publications which is what i've been doing as i've got more spare time and other things like that then maybe go for somewhere like liverpool for your mid-range i would say um unis you're still going to have the same outcome as a doctor you'd still going to get that doctor status all you can say is if you go to kbg oxford is oh i went to cambridge or oxford for uni you get the sort of oh wow kind of thing it might maybe if you went to cambridge and oxford i think it might contribute a little bit towards speciality training potentially you might say oh cambridge on your degree and you think okay they they they will have had a very good knowledge of all these different things potentially however if you've got someone who's went to cambridge uni and someone who's done loads of publications loads of research loads of audits loads of um sit-in committees who've done xyz extra then you'll be more likely to choose that other person who's committed to that kind of speciality and things like that again if you wanted to have that kind of college life um as opposed to a typical uni then again you only really get that at cambridge at oxford and some maybe i think holland york do one um so yeah but it shouldn't really be the be-all and end-all but what i'm trying to say is that there's varying levels of difficulty in workload and just because you go to do medicine doesn't mean you're going to get the same experience in the same level of work as every other student in the uk so where should you apply well if i was in your shoes i'd make sure that i had everything in place i had my grades were good i had my gcses were the correct grades for where i was applying which i didn't do i didn't get into cardiff because i had 5a stars and 4a's and they wanted 6a stars and yeah i didn't get it i was rejected straight off the bat so make sure you have the requirements for the course that you want to do scour their website for every single bit of information um and yeah maybe see how much waiting you have on certain things make sure you've got all your cv is up to date or personal statements or whatever they say um all your volunteering and all that kind of stuff and try and do that throughout a levels to get your chance of increasing as well but yeah thank you very much for watching if you have any questions pop them in the comments section or feel free to message me and i'll be more than happy to answer those thank you very much for watching and i'll see you later guys

Channel: James Ashton

Views: 6,095

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Id: xbBbEVBjmrg

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021