Last Sunday, I went up to Nottingham University to spend 4 days at Medlink, a medical conference. After finding my halls of residence (which was amazingly close to where most of the lectures were), I went to the sports hall for our first lecture. After a brief introduction on how to make the most of Medlink, we had our first talk on Paediatrics then General Medicine. Both were very interesting but were mainly talks encouraging us to join that particular specialty. We then had a talk from a man in the air ambulance, who told us some fascinating stories from his time on the air ambulance after showing us a video of people breaking bones (and often subsequently standing on the bone). It was a really interesting talk, and everyone seemed to leave the talk wanting to either hear more or join the air ambulance immediately.
The next day, the morning involved more talks on specialties (Surgery, General Practice and A&E) and a talk on “What kind of a Doctor would I make?”. I enjoyed learning more about the particular specialties, and more about the history of surgery. Safe to say, I would not have liked to have needed surgery long ago, when sterile environments were unheard of and any old person could perform it. We then heard about the opportunities provided by studying medicine in Europe and did a casualty-alert simulation, in which we had to try and diagnose 2 people before they infected everyone else. Considering one of the people had a heart attack and the other had diabetes, we were all a bit confused by the spread of the disease. We also listened to “Life as a Junior Doctor” from a man who had worked in the Navy, which was very engaging.
On Tuesday, we had another talk on studying abroad, this time in Grenada at St. George’s University. We also learned more about the different styles of teaching medicine, and had a lecture from a woman who specialised in geriatrics, which was particularly interesting considering my experiences at Rowden House. In the afternoon, we had a Q&A session with current med school students, and it was interesting listening to their answers and opinions on their med schools. We also spent some time doing clinical skills (‘patient’ diagnosis, using a stethoscope and using otoscopes and opthalmoscopes), which I enjoyed. Otoscopes were particularly interesting as I had never used one before. In the evening, I went to the optional ‘The EDGE’ session, which was fascinating as we learn different routes into both med school and medicine.
On Wednesday, we initially went to the Exhibition, where it was nice talking to different universities and looking at opportunities that you may not have previously considered. We also had a talk on the UKCAT and winning and keeping a place at med school (which was very similar to the EDGE). I also spent the afternoon at the optional Oxbridge session, where it was interesting to see how different the BMAT was to the UKCAT and listening to the talk on Oxbridge admissions.
In general, I had a great 4 days, as the talks were really interesting, I met a lot of new people and learnt a lot, but above all, I enjoyed feeling as if I were at university, as it felt like I had finally achieved my dream.
