Hey all,
Been using this site since I was teenager to snap up good deals. Always see these AMA's and I thought it'd be interesting to do one myself since people seem to always have quirky questions for me.
Ask Away!
[AMA] I Am an Australian Medical Student - Ask Me Anything
LimAfunnyGuy on 30/11/2019 - 17:29
closed Comments
How are you a funny guy? Like a clown funny?
Knock knock
Come in
Get out
Gluten.
Hormones in the chicken.
Homo up the chook?
Marxism
Educate yourself… immerse yourself in their culture… this is where you will find the answers you "are too illiterate to find"
The dentists in the room sighs of relief.
A common misconception, 90% of the people I know actually have a really big desire to go into some form of primary care. Being a GP is one of the only avenues that affords you a real life outside of work where as a surgery pathway will have you drained most of your life. Also good GP's are awesome, they are some of the most knowledge and lovely people I know and learn from. As opposed to some of the surgeons we work with whom can be really fully of themselves.
I think this sort of societal thinking in the status quo really fails to acknowledge the importance of GP's and how hard they have worked to get where they are. Without GP's there is no health system. They still have to pass the same training exams to obtain their fellowship, no different to how an aspiring need to pass their SET. Personally I feel if you said that to a GP's face it'd be pretty disrespectful. The notion of only becoming a GP cause you couldn't become a surgeon is quite frankly dumb and a very ignorant statement. But tbh wouldn't be surprised if some uncle or aunty at a wedding said that to me in 10 years time haha.
A gp is a starting point to get the referRal, they will never have the experience unless from a personal point of view or they are an up to date old Dr.
There's 1 million type 2 diabetics in Australia on the NDSS - (WA accounting for 10% of the population - Lets say 100,000 in WA). There are about 30 endocrinologists in WA (roughly).
If GP's referred every patient. Patients would be experiencing a 10-20 year wait to see an endocrine specialist for basic diabetes care.
Not all GP's are great at their job. But don't generalise, because many are brilliant and help keep the healthcare system running economically. This is the key and this is why we will always need GP's.
@[Deactivated]: GPs provide primary care, and can work with specialists to manage complex health care. Most GPs do professional development on a regular basis, and many have undertaken specialisation training to be better qualified in particular fields.
@[Deactivated]: Oh bless that confident ignorance. Here is a list of commonly used Medicare item numbers for GPs. Commonly used, not remotely exhaustive.
https://www.cesphn.org.au/preview/practice-management-and-ac…
There are GP obstetricians, GP anaesthetists, GP emergency physicians, GP general surgeons, GP run hospitals in rural and regional Australia…I could go on.
Without general practictioners, regional and rural Australia would be on it's knees, and the hospital system would fall apart. Check yourself.
@WoodYouLikeSomeCash: Your own stupidity negged you. Admit it, you’re wrong lest your blatant ignorance blind you.
@WoodYouLikeSomeCash: Almost finished training in a specialist program other than general practice (which FYI is a specialist training program now). Also negged you.
@WoodYouLikeSomeCash: hah! Good luck going against establishment thinking around here mate. :)
As for GP's, if you are lucky you'll get a good one, they are out there but you have to hunt around sometimes. What's usual is an overworked legal drug pusher who can only address symptoms and not causes. I used to have a good one but he fell off his roof and got so smashed up he had to retire. :)
Now let's see if I can beat your neg count!
Lol what did they fail
They passed medical school and they passed their hospital rotations and they passed their 3-4 years of GP exams.
They choose to pick a job where they can work < 40 hrs per week and still have a professional career.
There are very few jobs that allow you that option and none with the variety and pay of a GP
some of the surgeons we work with whom can be really fully of themselves.
cough Charlie Teo cough what do you think of him?
A dentist atleast does something on a pt.
There are many other avenues you likely won't have had experience in yet that afford you a work/life balance. Clinical research, medicine safety, digital technology, corporate health, bioscience venture capital are some other things you can do with your degree. I've worked in all to some extent. All very important to improving health. In my opinion though medicine is not a great choice if you prioritise a well balanced life.
There has got to be a better worded version, because that's just plain wrong.
And a GP easily pulls in 6 figures while having work life balance so just shows how stupid they are.
You know the richest doctors I know are
1) those that own GP practices with >20 GPs working for them
2) academic clinicians (grants are in the millions) regardless of speciality.Your perception is simply incorrect and the “just a GP mentality” needs to go away. Too many colleagues not doing GP just for their ego and it’s frustrating. (I’m in the surgical pathway and I almost failed med school multiple times. Having said that I would 100% do GP).
Might want to check your maths there, well over a third of medical students become GPs…fail rates in medical school are nowhere near that high ;)
And remember, next time you disparage a GP, remember that like everyone else in medical school, they are high achieving, high scorers from high school who felt they could make the biggest difference to people in the community. Who unfortunately have to treat everyone. Including people with that attitude.
My GP is a surgeon who preferred being a GP.
Do you flick pieces of fat (from the cadavers) at each other?
Someone in my year was suspended and consequently unable to complete the syllabus for the year and had to repeat.
Yeah and the deviates have a tube of lipstick and want to hang around after class
Definitely a no no. Working with cadavers is something taken very seriously as we've been trusted to study donated bodies in aid of getting an education to help others. Playing with the bodies like that would definitely get you kicked from the course at my university. No second chances.
Did you watch that guy who works on cadavers on youtube?
It's so hard to look but interesting at the same time
Link
Gunter. Did OK with him, until he took off someone's face. Ugh.
We are pretty lucky at our uni to be well resourced, so typically what we do in our anatomy labs is more than enough.
Cadaver question.
I'm going to be going into Osteo next year, so I imagine it's more of a point and identify this thing rather than what you have to go through but….
How did you handle it? I feel like it's going to either freak me out entirely or I'm not going to be phased by it.
Asking for a friend. He has wart like things on his little fella. What are your thoughts?
Amputate
Get a big fella
You mean like a prothesis?
Both you and him need to be checked before your next 'date' 😉
"Wart-like things" is too vague a description . Please send Ms paint drawings :p
He used MS Paint too much…
That's a lot of car crashes.
Probably HPV without a more accurate description.
Get the wart either frozen or cut and sent off.Wart was your friend doing before it appeared?
If his immediate friends have no idea what so ever, then I suggest rather than looking at his "little fella" to look at get more educated friends.
Of cause they are a sexually transmitted virus.Also, a lot of people think that pearly penile papules are warts or some sort of problem but they’re completely benign and very common (in case you’re serious and this is what you meant)
What do you want to specialise in?
Not answering AMAs
Hey, sorry for the late reply I went out last night wasn't on Ozbargain.
I think personally I am very interested in Ophthalmology. It is one of the most interesting and unique fields with a good balance of surgical and physician based medicine. There are so many different parts to the eye that you can sub specialise in and over all I think it's amazing the difference a treatment can make to a patients life. Fred Hollows was always an idol of mine from a young age and before I even decided medicine so sorta full circle. In saying that, I still have a while left before I decide what I want to specialise in.
Lmfao have fun 8-10 year unaccredited reg time. Although in all honesty hats off to you if you do make it through … and I don’t know you or anything maybe you’re the one that’ll make it through easily and I’ll be eating my words haha
Nonetheless honestly good luck :)
And if you still have a while to go you’ll probably change your mind (not always but 95% of people do)Ps. If you want physician surgeon mix there’s o&g as well to consider. Every speciality has subspecialities too so don’t get too bogged down on that. Hope you end in where you want to be
Not necessarily true. If you start doing opthal research in med school and build long term relationships with the profs from pretty much now, when it's time to get on its much easier. I've had a few friends go down that path and didn't have to wait past PGY4. Medicine is all about the relationships you build and without them you spin your wheels in unaccredited jobs for a long time.
@MessyG: That's pretty much amazing / unheard of in Victoria. I'm not too aware of the ophthal training program but I know it varies between different states with varying criteria. In Vic - stupidly the CV component includes your Z-score (med school marks lol).
Finding research to do during med school was an absolute pain in the ass, and if you found / did anything substantial I'd expect you to get in a surgical training program by PGY5 (which is what you've said). I know someone who pushed out >20 papers before med school finished and he got in specialty surgery (vasc) at PGY3.
@diazepam: True, I'm much more familiar with the Sydney entry pathway - they wouldn't include Z-score because USyd's grad-med program got rid of scores for over a decade. Sadly brought them back in because so many people wanted to go to the US.
Just tryna help out. Maybe in 20 years ill do another one.
His AMA is as medical student, not a MD.
It's actually in the title.
Maybe take up a cognitive reasoning course
the irony…
Owned
Dumdum, do you understand what a title is? Do you understand every Ozbargainer isn’t a middle aged fat white guy drowning in eneloops and some visitors are students? Some are interested in the med school system. And some are even not total asshats. Don’t have a question to ask? Jog on. Don’t belittle someone’s experience when they’ve come to share that experience transparently with people who are interested. You’d think that’d be pretty simple for a genius like you.
Generally agree with calling out Uni students posting on the internet like they have advanced knowledge and industry experience with only a year or two of basic tuition (engineering/STEM undergrads are particularly obnoxious with that). But this isn't one of those cases, OP has clearly outlined he is a student and his thoughts might actually be useful to others interested in the study of medicine.
How much are you taught about nutrition and lifestyle factors? How much have you explored/intend to explore yourself?
…Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food, etc.
Not OP, but my university focuses on this HEAVILY. Lifestyle factors are basically first-like treatments for most chronic conditions (and if not, then they’re adjuvants). If you’re interested in some of the stuff we get taught about, google the “RACGP Red Book”
From the Red Book:
- "limit saturated fat and reduce salt"
- "Consumption of red meat and processed meat recommendations modified to align with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations".
- "limit red meat (three to four times per week) and limit or avoid processed meat"
- "In addition, a high intake of red meat is associated with an increased risk of CRC. The Australian dietary guidelines (ADG) therefore recommend that processed meat intake should be limited (also because of its high saturated fat content"
I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up__RB_rgRM
A huge part of what we are taught is diet based. So much of our health revolves around what we put into our bodies. A lovely tutor of mine recently put out a paper on how all diet's are fads, if you look around on the internet I am sure you can find who I am talking about. Personally I am not very interested in diet, however I can defs attest on it's significance. We also use the RACGP Red Book as written below it is a great resource.
Nutrition has many aspects.
1)It's not just about nutritional excess (although that is the main problem). You will definitely come across people with various nutritional deficiencies. (Not common but you will see a few)
2)All diets are fads —> Really? Please explain what you tutor meant.
3)Never heard of the RACGP Red Book need to look into it.Probably that eating healthy is a lifestyle, not a crash-diet to lose weight.
Yes we’re taught lifestyle makes a difference but that’s about as much as it. And first line treatment is always non pharmacological measures like lifestyle
But (at the two med schools I’ve been to - I deferred after a semester and made it to another school) med school barely taught us anything about nutrition
Recent paper that just came out proves how little doctors actually know about nutrition. I suppose that’s why there are dieticians out there
How much does medical school affect your time in a typical day?
Not OP, but my med school has a 6 year undergraduate program and the first 3 years (pre-clinical) has about as much teaching hours as regular school, but the amount you’d have to pre-read before lectures and study after were about the same amount of time (heavily limiting your free time). The last 3 years (where I’m at) is much more hands on and we get about 5-10 contact hours per week (class-wise), otherwise we are in the hospital for 8am-5pm most days (sometimes even weekends and night shifts), but the doctors are usually pretty nice and let us go early because we have so much study to do
I do a slightly more accelerated course than Time waster with 2 years pre clinical, 2 year clinical and one year transition in between. Overall I have uni Monday to Friday, 9-5. Makes getting a job near impossible and definitely takes a big hit on social life. However as long as you stay on top of your work there is more than enough time to have fun. Definitely have at least one big night out a week. My uni is pretty strict on attendance too, we have a gps app on our phone that sends our location when we are checking in for compulsory classes and placements.
I thought that GPS tracking was a joke… wow turns out it’s real (and in my opinion a gross invasion of privacy).
But anyway every ozbargainer knows how to fake location anywayIts actually really handy, makes attendance super easy for placements. Just whip out the iPhone app and send them your location and timestamp. Also works for getting clinician feedback in one place. If we are sick can take a picture of a medical certificate and it sends it to the faculty. As long as you aren't trying to skip compulsory things for no reason its great. No complaints at all. Its not tracking per say it is more like an app that lets us check in.
@imAfunnyGuy: @imAfunnyGuy
Communication is one of the fundamentals for professionals who deal with people. Good communication. And good grammar certainly helps.
Its actually really handy
It's actually… (apostrophe/contraction)
If we are sick can take a picture of a medical certificate
If we are sick (we) can take a picture… (missing/understood subject)
really handy, makes attendance
really handy; makes… (semicolon)
for no reason its great.
for no reason it's great. (apostrophe/contraction)
Its not tracking
It's not tracking… (apostrophe/contraction)
not tracking per say
not tracking per se… (Latin for in itself, or by itself)
not tracking per say it is more like an app
not tracking per se ; it is more like… (semicolon)
Yes, I'm a pedant.
Wow gps tracking students. That is ridiculous
Which uni is this? Never heard about this
my guess is Bond uni
Surgeon or physician ?
only one correct answer ;)
por qué no ambos
You are now banned from this thread due to continual nonsense comments and any future comments may lead to an account ban.
Spanish grammar better than English. :-)
Surgeon.
I feel like this was posted earlier…