Equip in first year

[Guest Kenola]

I see $3200 or so is alloted to equipment for first year med....What does this all consist of??

 

Thanks!

 

Kenola

[Guest kosmo14]

They try to convince you early that it is a nessesity to buy all of this useless equipment. They want you to buy 2 tuning forks, an opthalmascope, an otoscope, a stethescope, a tape measure, blood pressure cuff, a reflex hammer, and a queen square hammer.

 

Absolute waste of money. They will try thier best to convince you that you need it, even having some upper years talk about it (you know the tow the party line types).

 

What you need is: a stethoscope (my opinion is that the cardio III is all you need, I wasted my money on the master cardio and it is no different), the queen square hammer is definately useful, the tape measure is helpful in clerkship for Obs (although easy to take one from the nursing station). The other stuff is a complete waste of time and money. The opthalmoscope is the biggest waste to money costing around 500. I did not use it once. They will try to say that you need to practice with it, but you won't. That stuff is always available at the nursing station, or in the examination rooms. You will get sufficient practice time in you clerkship rotations should you choose.

 

Don't fall into the trap of spending all of that money everytime they tell you to. Med school is already expensive enough. Another place to waste money is on the recommended textbooks. Each prof. will give this list of recommended textbooks for thier class. Some will be rediculous enough to put down 5 "absolute need" textbooks with 2-4 for supplemental reading. Don't waste your money. Talk to the upper years, ask them what was useful. I have never needed more than one textbook per class, many times the class notes + a good general medicine book was more than enough (Toronto notes are extremely helpful for most of systems).

 

Hope this helps you save some money. I wish someone would have told us this prior to entering, because I am sure I would be at least $20000 better off by now.

 

Good luck