Hands-on experience

[Guest Ruenil]

Hey all,

 

I was wondering - mainly for all of you out there who have already gone through some of the schooling - how much hands-on experience you got in your first few years (and what school you went to!), and whether or not you found that it made a difference in your education.

 

I've always been of the mindset that hands-on experience 1) gives you a feel for what the environment is like and 2) helps you to solidify the information you take in in lectures, and reading; however, discussing it recently with someone, I was told they personally found it somewhat unimportant, as they felt they didn't have the knowledge going in to get much out of it.

 

Thoughts? Experiences?

[Guest blinknoodle]

Hey Ruenil,

 

I'm almost done my first year meds at UWO and I think observerships have been a great way to supplement what I learn in the classroom. Since it is entirely up to you to schedule your own observerships, some of my classmates haven't done any any, whereas others do up to 1-2/week. It is up to each person what they get out of their time.

 

This is the way I have approached it (which may be different than others): At the beginning of the year, we got an excel spreadsheet with the names, area, and contact info of potential supervisors for observerships (I have never had someone tell me they didn't want a student, and you are free to randomly email other clinicians). Mainly because I wanted to keep my options open for residencies, and I wanted to supplement my lectures, I structured my observerships such that I shadowed someone in the area we were covering (or had just covered), ie. a cardiologist during cardio weeks, or ENT during our neuroscience/ear week, etc. This way, in addition to what you already mentioned re: a feel for the specialty, you don't feel like you know nothing if you couple it with your respective classroom weeks (you don't know everything, granted, but the clinicians certainly bring the teaching to your level) and you get to add the patient story to your learning. Personally, I find that this is how I learn best (somehow lectures don't do it for me, but I tend to remember the patients that I saw). Different clinicians will give you different opportunities to do things hands-on (mostly you are observing the clinician if in the clinic, asking/answering questions, in addition to basic history and physical exam stuff, scrubbing in and helping out in the OR, and one of my friends has done a ton of procedures in the ER).. but I think it is probably related to your eagerness but also a bit of who else is there and how comfortable your physician is with you (ie. when I did my two surgery observerships, both times, there was the surgeon and 2 residents (no clerks), so I got to help out quite a bit).

 

So, to summarise the experience at UWO: it is up to you to schedule your visits (which means you can do what you want when you want, if you want), we have ample time to actually do the observerships (ie. only 2 hours of class on Weds, and Friday afternoons are off, plus the occasional random time off), I definitely feel I supplement my classroom learning and enhance my knowledge of the specialty, and I highly recommending doing some sort of observership at whatever school you go to. This certainly isn't a UWO-specific thing (although what may vary between schools is availability of time to support observerships).

 

Certainly you will get a better feel for the specialty in clerkship, but I still really enjoy and learn a lot from my observerships in the early years.

[Guest Ruenil]

Thanks Blinknoodle, that helps! I had no idea you could do that at Western. It sounds interesting.

[Guest UWOMED2005]

Yeah, if I could change one thing about my time at med school at Western, it would have been to skip more classes and do more observerships at the hospitals. I did a few, but certainly not 1-2/week. . . and overall they would have been more valuable to my learning than class was.

[Guest JewelLeigh]

At Dal in the first two years, you are required to complete an "elective" course. This is one afternoon per week that most students do in a clinical setting, working with a physician. For example, I did mine in an out-patient pediatrics clinic. On top of that for most of first year and I think second, we spend an additional half-day per week on rotations through some areas of medicine (eg. cardiology, resp) learning how to do physical exams and interviews. These are actually in the hospital with patients and tutored by physicians in small groups.

 

As well, my impression is that you can easily do observerships at any medical school. Though I'm only in first year, I have yet to come across a doctor who was unwilling to have me sit in on a clinic, surgery, etc. when I have free time. For example, tomorrow I have the morning off and so am going to go participate in a prenatal clinic with an obstetrician I met last week. Thus far (knock on wood!) every doctor I have come across in the Dalhousie-associated hospitals has been amazing when it comes to enthusiasm for taking on time with students in their earlier years. Every med student at Dal has access to all Dal medical faculty members' contact info, so it's easy to find doctors in areas that interest each student.

 

That being said, and though I'm not 100% sure, I doubt this ability to do observerships on your free time as a 1st or 2nd year med student varies much from school to school within Canada. Most doctors seem to love what they do and are more than happy to share that enthusiasm with any med student. What will vary between med schools, is the amount of "formal" hands-on stuff you have to do in the first two years...such as the electives program I mentioned above...and the amount of free time you have to do it.

 

As to the benefits of such experience...personally, I find the hands-on stuff is awesome. Yes, there are many times when I am so clueless that I am not much help, but there is ALWAYS loads to learn! I also find being around patients in a clinical setting keeps me sane in the middle of all the studying, as well as reminds me why I went into this profession in the first place.

 

Edit: Just realized that I was surfing through the OMSAS area - sorry if you weren't interested in stuff from outside Ontario!

[Guest Ruenil]

Edit: Just realized that I was surfing through the OMSAS area - sorry if you weren't interested in stuff from outside Ontario!

 

No, that's great! The more information, the better. It's sounding really neat. I had noticed that schools such as UWO didn't have as much structured hands-on time as some of the others, and it's good to know it's a common option to shadow doctors in your spare time.

 

Thanks for all the replies!

 

Another school I was looking into was Ottawa U. I haven't been able to find many specifics about their program... their website I haven't found as clear as some of the others. If anyone has any experience with that school, I'd love to hear about it. (And any other school, really, it's all helpful and interesting to hear about.)

[Guest 0T6]

Hi there, I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for.. but check out the elective catalogue for ottawa.. it gives pretty detailed reviews about the various rotations and the different roles a med student could have on the health care team:

 

www.medicine.uottawa.ca/electives/eng/

[Guest Ruenil]

Thanks OT6, I got some useful information out of that link.