still doing pbl at 2am now
act referring prof robinson folder from i drive
for those who studying in medical schools which have PBL, how do u think of PBL?

This post has been edited by chika138: Apr 4 2008, 01:56 AM

I find discussing and finding information during pbls very useful and good. I've done 2 so far and I enjoy their little 'stories'.

the intergrated pbl system is definitely more interesting for students.......the downside is, without a complete syllabus cover, there will be gaps (and sometimes big holes) in the students' knowledge of the basic sciences......it can be frightening to find the dark holes in knowledge of some of these fresh graduates........

the old system is dry.....very dry......much rote learning without seeing the relevance in the beginning........but armed with this basic background knowledge, everything clicks into place in the clinical years, and throughout your working life.........

dat's true, eventhough the traditional system is dry, but it equips us with the impt concepts medstudents nid to know. somehow PBL might lead u into extensive findings which r quite irrrelevant for a medstudent, to satisfy the desire to understand the whole area of a certain subject, without grasping the again, impt concepts.

This post has been edited by wgy589: Apr 4 2008, 11:12 AM

anyone did foundation in science b4 joining the medical field?i'm doin it rite now and i wonder will it be hard to achieve 3.0CGPA in it..i'm planning to go Russia's Moscow Medical Academy..recognized??

cgpa 3.0.........amazing how low these russians will go to get one of those cash paying foreign students.......

Is the traditional system just lectures and clinicals? Pardon me, but I don't really know how medicine was taught last time except that there was plenty of lectures.


For me, my weekly uni classes are:
8 basic science lectures
1 PBL
1 Health Practice lecture
1 Health Practice tute
1 ICM tute
0/1/2 pracs

But, I think it is the same right now too, regarding the lectures. So, I don't understand how the "old" doctors have more understanding of concepts while the 'fresh' doctors do not.

traditionally, pre-clinical basic sciences were/(still are, in some places) taught as stand-alone subjects, ie physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, pathology, pharmacology, microbiology, etc.......in a mixture of lectures, practicals, tutorials etc...but each subject is covered separately, but comprehensively in a complete syllabus.....therefore the coverage of each subject is complete, but poorly or not linked at all to the other subjects......

the intergrated system takes these different aspects of medical sciences, and lump them together into organ systems, so say when you cover the respiratory system, you will cover the anatomical, physiological, pathological, biochemical etc aspects of respiration.........the trouble is, there are always 'orphan' topics or information, that doesn't pigeon-holed into the standard organ systems......and they often get missed out.....usually because much of pbl is self directed learning, and the student will NOT know what he has missed, obviously......and the usual random matching of tutors and students means that the tutors themselves do NOT know what the student have covered, or NOT covered.....

understand now? good med schools tries to minimise this by setting some kind of comprehensive syllabus as a guide, or assigning a permanent tutor to a group, who can then monitor the progress more thoroughly, at the price of not benefiting from the variety that different tutors brings.......and if you are stuck with a lousy lazy tutor, tough luck......

pbl is a good way in which it can bring the pren-clinical medical students into a 'life' clinical practice..
you will get to know as to why the nephrotic patients' have puffiness of the eye or anywhere on the body, plus the red cell cast finding in the urine UFEME; for instance.
but, enough said, its all depends on the fascillitator who took over the pbl sessions.
like in my school, most of the sessions are being fascilitated by a non-practicing doctor (anatomist/pathologist/biochemist). in the end, if you end up being with a pathologist, they will want you to discuss more on the pathology informations( the ever so extensive details on the pathological course and histopathological findings) rather than bragging about all the crucially-important anatomical aspect of the disease.
wat i wanna suggest here is that, the clinical lecturers should co-operate and play a role in teaching this freshly-newbie medical students so that hopefully when they all come to the clinical years, they do know what are the things that they should emphasize on, and most importantly, utilizing all the basic sciences that they have learned during pre-clinical years..
wat can be seen now, its like the pre-clinical stuff are being stacked far far away when the pre-clinical students enter the clinical practice..

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Added on April 6, 2008, 12:04 pmanybody in here who can help me on this..?
im considering of doing a specialty in neurosurgery.may i know wat are the routes/options that i have to take in order to be one..?
i have been told by the senior neurosurgeon medical officer that malaysia has started to recruit@train those who are interested to take neurosurgeon as a specialty but ofcourse, it will be under the recommendation from the senior specialist.
the training is somewhere in usm if im not mistaken..just wanna know in detail about this and any other methods available..
thanx in advance

This post has been edited by zergg: Apr 6 2008, 12:04 PM

graduate first, and complete the 2 year housemanship first, then think about it....it is NOT something to think about at undergraduate level........

very true.. but i think it all goes down to how the university decides to have or carry out the traditional system. in my university, we have supervisions for each of the subject we are doing.. we will all meet for an hour(for each subject), and basically the supervisor will go through what we've learnt. and it is during these times that we will be able to listen to stories as to how the things were discovered, and also clarify anything we don't understand.. in fact, i prefer the traditional method much more than the pbl method. we had to do pbl for one of the subjects last term, and i found that i didn't learn anything from the sessions. worse thing is that i actually managed to confuse myself with some of the basic concepts of the subject discussed..

well, the PBL does have it's pro & cons..
but from 1st hand experience, it does shift the focus away from basic clinical sciences..
i'm just weeks away from my finals, & honestly my basic sciences are cr@p!

(well, mayb i'm a cr@ppy student & this is not due to PBL,)

the success of any PBL session depends on its participants..
whether they just come in empty, or well prepared..
do they regard PBL as a brainstorming session? or just a futile exercise..
the group i was with during my 2nd-3rd years was an OK one..
unfortunately, no one wanted to conduct the session..
and yours truly was the sole conductor of the session for 2 whole years..
(although asking questions is kinda cool, makes you look smarter than dumbly not answering -> House MD)

(i just saw this post )

you have a pretty light load...

i'm a second year medic, and apparently this year is supposed to be hell for us..

basically, i have 12 hours of lectures; 4 hours of supervisions (i.e. tutorials); 5-8 hours of practicals (depending on the week..).. so some days i have a solid 9-5 (with an hour break for lunch).. (not to mention the fact that everyone does extra stuff e.g. sports and drama.. so u'll be pressured to join in.. hehe..)e.g., on wednesdays i have 9-2; 3-4; 6-7 and 8-10..

i supposed this is where there is a difference between pbl and traditional system. in pbl u research the topic, and although the amount of reading needed is a lot, it probably can't beat being taught by a person who specializes in the field.. in traditional system, we basically have 12 solid hours worth (each lecture lasting an hour) of teaching and information to digest.. and in practicals (especially our path practicals) we sometimes learn new things, like gram staining and microscope stuff..

but as for the understanding tu.. i think old doctors are just pulling ur leg.. waktu their time, most of the stuff weren't discovered yet, and (for biochem, i think) they have great big holes where they don't know how things work.. haha...

Yea... my contact hours are even less than the first year science students. We change lecturers every week though, each one specializing in their own field and the annoying thing is that ALL of the lecturers expect you to know everything about their certain area of specialty and ALL of them have their favourite book. We went from physiology to biochem to histology to anatomy.... We just had an exam last week and it was full of all this small tiny details which are only mentioned by the lecturer once throughout the whole lecture and isn't even in the lecture notes. >.<

not knowing something that has yet to be 'discovered' is VERY different from not knowing something well established.........the former is covered by something called CME/CPD......and the later is called poorly taught and learnt.......

Which uni are you in? That's really a schedule from hell compared to the 2 lectures/day back in my IMU days.
Of course, we were pretty much left to fend for ourselves no thanks to the puny amount of lectures. It's even worse in clinical schools where everything comes pouring down like a waterfall... We virtually know nothing in the wards.

Melbourne Uni? Meh... don't bother understanding those details. Just scribble as much as you can during lectures, and memorise them kao kao before those small tests... they just freaking love to ask those small print shit.

Large print = understanding for your own knowledge.
Small print = memorise for passing exams.


This post has been edited by StarGhazzer: Apr 8 2008, 10:31 PM

same la.. but the library is usually well stocked so we don't really need to worry too much bout that.. as for exams, memang lecture materials masuk what... in our pharm lecture, our sneaky sneaky inflammation lecturer put all the drugs we need to know in the last slide of her last lecture!! gila tau.. my friend ter-miss out the drug name, nasib baik itu cuma test, bukan final exams!!!


hehe... but i agree la that old doctors seem to know their stuff well. i think it is also the attitude of the current students, me included. We just want to pass exams, and not really understand a certain concept. as a result, we don't really learn anything. we don't try to make associations with stuff that we learn, hence our memory of the thing pun doesn't stay there for long..


Well, that's only my second year.. first year kurang la.. we only had 9 hours lecture, 6-9 hours lab and 3 hour supervisions..

but our holiday very long one... the first three years, we are on holiday basically for half a year close to 7 weeks for christmas and close to 6 weeks for easter

hey, after my finals next week, i'll be having 4 months of holidays, wat u tink, ahhhahahahah

noe wat i advice u tat u shud somehow follow wat u are interested in... studying is one thing.... but imagine that u hv to work on sth u hv no passion in it for ur entire life...tat'll b horrible....juz follow ur heart.. any career as long as u work hard u'll reach ur success one day.. all the best!!

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Added on April 11, 2008, 10:28 pmoh ya by the way.. i'm interested in dentistry...and i heard from some medical students that even dentistry students need to do anatomy.. i'm not vry sure am i able to handle that....anyone willling to share their experience with me?

This post has been edited by tinsze: Apr 11 2008, 10:29 PM

yeah, dental students in my skok nids to do anat, which is mostly on head and neck part (which i'm greatly interested in)

This post has been edited by wgy589: Apr 12 2008, 12:46 AM