Schedule of a First Year Medical Student

As we have started the new year and will be heading into spring time (which will be here faster than we know it), a lot of pre-meds and medical student hopefuls are getting interviews and doing their research on prospective schools they would like to attend. Initially, I wasn’t planning on doing a post like this, but thank you to whomever posted my blog on the Student Doctor Forum. Turns out this is something ya’ll look at a bit when deciding on a school!

KCU is mostly broken up into system blocks. This means that each set block/subject will be for an “x” amount of weeks before being completely finished and you move on to the next. There are also a couple of longitudinal courses that last the whole semester long. These courses don’t always have something required to do every week, but many weeks will have some sort of learning event that you need to be a part of. There are also additional optional learning events you can partake in as well.

The order that I list them (in the block sections) is the order we had our courses.

Without further ado, here is how my schedule was last semester as a first year and what is expected for the remainder of my second semester.

First Semester: Longitudinal Courses

Longitudinal courses will have lectures, quizzes, labs, and competencies all woven in throughout random times in the semester. There are a few days off from your regular block schedule for you to study and focus on your midterms for PCM and OS and again for your finals. During our renal block, we had about a week and a few days for these longitudinal courses to have their final exams and add in any last-minute competencies and labs that didn’t get done during the rest of the semester. The medical informatics and bioethics classes had quizzes but no actual tests.

Medical Informatics 1
Credits: 0.5
– Bioethics 1
Credits: 1
– Principals of Clinical Medicine 1 (PCM)
Credits: 3
Osteopathic Skills 1 (OS)
Credits: 2.5

I have a post for what PCM is linked here as well.

First Semester: Block Courses

First up: was Biochemistry. It was called Molecular Mechanisms because it also encompassed molecular biology, some genetics, and some histology. It was very similar to the COB biochemistry and part of molecular biology course of their master’s program; but without going too heavily in-depth on some of the science and with more medically stuff. If you want more information on my experiences during this block or an example weekly schedule from this block, check out “My First Block of Medical School: Biochem”.
Length: 3 weeks
Credits: 3.5

Next was our Musculoskeletal unit. This was the first super intense course for me given the length and amount of material. Not to mention we had an anatomy lab component to this. This incorporated histology, physiology, a lot of anatomy, embryology, some pharmacology, etc. Most second years told us this would be our hardest block of the semester. Check out my “First half of MSK” or my “Second half of MSK” posts on this block!
Length: 6 weeks
Credits: 5

Following this was our Immunology block. This was titled Host Defense Mechanisms. Most of it was condensed and very similar to their master’s program immunology information. Again, it was just condensed. There may have been a histology section but there really wasn’t a ton of additional subjects in this course. To check out more on this block specifically, click “Immunology Block” post.
Length: 3 weeks
Credits: 2.5

Following this we jumped straight into Cardiopulmonary. This was a really intense block given the amount of material we had to know in a short amount of time. But it was a lot more clinically relevant. Being able to add in more clinical skills that we’ve learned in this course made it easier to digest for me. Also included were a ton of physiology, some anatomy, some histology, some biochemistry, embryology, and some pharmacology. We had a small anatomy lab component. Check out the “Cardiopulmonary” post for this block.
Length: 5 weeks
Credits: 4.5

The last block we had was Renal. I hated this block. If you want more on my dislike/struggles check out “Medical School: Renal Block” post. This block also had a ton of physiology, some anatomy, some embryology, an immunology lecture, and a little bit of histology. This was definitely my personal hardest block to get through.
Length: 3 weeks
Credits: 2.5

Second Semester: Longitudinal Courses

Medical Informatics 2
Credits: 0.5
Basic introduction to research
Credits: 1
Osteopathic Skills 2
Credits: 2
Principals of Clinical Medicine 2
Credits: 3
Art, Observation, & Medicine
Credits: 0.5

Second Semester: Block Courses

First up was GI. As I’m writing this, I’m in the middle of this block. This is consisting of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, embryology, histology, genetics, immunology, and pharmacology. There is a larger anatomy lab component to this course as you also include renal (as we didn’t do it in our renal course) and part of endocrine/reproduction (our next block).
Length: 3 weeks
Credits: 3

The next block will be Endocrine/Reproduction. I’m sure there will be many components that make up this block as well and I know we have anatomy lab.
Length: 4 weeks
Credits: 4.5

Next up will be Neuroscience. This will be a long and intense block from what the second years tell me. There will be anatomy lab and I know from previously digging that there will be 3 total tests (the most we’ve had in one block).
Length: 5 weeks
Credits: 5.5

Our last block of the spring semester is MOD, or Mechanisms of Disease. This is to incorporate most of what we learned in first year and start prepping us for second year. I have no idea how that block is going to go or how it is run yet. Will let you know more later!
Length: 7 weeks
Credits: 5

And there you have it! As of right now a lot of my second semester courses I don’t have corresponding blog posts about… obviously because I haven’t taken them yet. But this is the general order, how long each block is, and how many credits each course is. I hope this helps with all of you pre-meds and future physicians out there!

Good luck on interview season guys.

Renal Block

Ahh yes. Renal. My new arch enemy.

You see physics and I go way back. This love-hate relationship (but really more of a hate-hate relationship?). This “I know I need you for medical school but I really really despise you and will never understand you” type of relationship. 

Don’t ask me how I got through it. I had to retake physics in undergrad …

But now that physics has left me, renal has since taken its spot. Why you ask? Could be many things. Could be that I simply just don’t understand the kidneys. Could be that I didn’t feel I benefitted from my lectures. Could be I really didn’t understand the link between lectures and the questions come exam time. There could be many possibilities with many combinations.

Could have been I failed both tests. Ya know. Might be that. (If you’d like to check out this story, head on over to my “I survived my first semester of medical school” post).

But either way, me and renal are no longer friends.

To be fair to renal, it was also likely that I simply just did not understand majority of it. No matter how hard I tried to. I definitely employed many different study techniques and switched it up between the midterm and final thinking that would help. But for as much effort that was put in, and attempt to do better by the time the final came around, renal still had me like:

courtesy of giphy.com

Breakdown of the Exams:

The midterm covered 9 lectures in several different categories.

Biochemistry: 5 questions

Embryology: 5 questions

Histology/Anatomy: 9 questions

Physiology: 41 questions

Total: 60 questions

The final exam covered 10 lectures. This time though, there were not as many different categories.

Immunology: 8 questions

Physiology: 52 questions

Total: 60 questions

There was no lab component/lab practical this time around. We will be covering this in our upcoming GI course in it’s lab component.

Now, I know what you are thinking; Joyce, there were barely any lectures on these tests. Why are you making such a big deal out of it? 

Or maybe you aren’t thinking this. But I definitely am.

That’s… that’s a great question. This block had a lot of physiology on it. When we started way back in our MSK block, we had several different components to the exam. So if you did poorly in one section, or didn’t think you would do stellar on a section, you could try to do well on other sections. We had something similar to this for most of cardiopulm and on our midterm for this block. But lately in our blocks, there has been a large portion of physiology.

There really isn’t a ton of additional things to focus on this course. Majority of the other sections (biochem, histo, embryo, anatomy) where pretty straight forward. We had one lecture combining histo and anatomy, so there was only so much they could have pulled from that lecture.

For biochem, our professor marked the important slides, but her in-lecture practice questions (and honestly the 5 test questions) were based off of the boxes from our Panini biochem textbook on diseases. (Which she marked as important and discussed in class for us to know!)

Oh! And there is math. Not quite as much as there was in cardiopulm, but there is math here. And they like to be tricky and put the numbers they give you in different units; meaning you have to spend time converting it to the correct units or you don’t get the correct answer. Another thing is too; is pay attention to the examples they give you in the lectures. They will have some math problems very very similar to how they do those problems.

Studying:

Well, take my advice on this section with a grain of salt. The recommended book (Renal Physiology (6th ed.). Koeppen, Bruce M.; Stanton, Bruce A.) is needed for the DSA readings. For this course you will definitely want to read. The lectures and content are confusing, and you will want to have at least one solid source to go back to. I heard this from several second years (to read that is), and although it didn’t get me all the way there, it definitely got me close enough to an almost passing grade. (Side note: many of my classmates who did do better than I did also had to read a lot).

Some of the lectures are based off of Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology [(13th ed.). Hall, John E.]. There were lectures that were almost entirely identical to a chapter or so in this book. For other lectures, they were based off the recommended textbook.

The main thing to take away here is understanding the processes themselves. Which is a giant hurdle in and of itself! The kidney is complex and does a lot of crazy but important things in the body. So the first step is to learn the processes as is.

Next, you need to be able to know that if you change on thing in the process, how this affects everything else. There were not a ton of charts in our lectures, but there were a lot of questions that required chart answers. I would show you, but I can’t seem to figure out how to do it. So imma just explain it to you.

There will be a series of columns with different headings, such as Na, K, renin, angiotensin II, Mg, water in/out, etc. Each subsequent row would be your answer choice, so the first row under the heading would be labeled “A” and each subsequent row will be another possible answer choice. Under each heading will be an arrow up, and arrow down, or an arrow sideways (meaning unchanged). Based off the question asked, you would need to know what happened/how each heading would change.

It’s honestly a pain in the butt. See why you need to spend time with the processes? You have to know what happens to each thing.

I really didn’t like the textbook, so I didn’t do as much reading as I probably should had for the midterm. But, I also had plenty of other subjects to be tested on. For the final however, I read more. I read almost all of the chapters that were tested under the final (and for this block you will read almost the whole book). But I also went to filling out objectives for most of the physiology lectures. Why? Because technically they can only test questions that can be linked back to a learning objective. But really, there is quite the broad interpretation for that. (There were also some learning objectives that happened to be based off of the end of the chapter questions in the recommended book!)

Additionally, just like with every other subject, I wrote a lot. This works for me, although it is quite time consuming. I tried to focus the big picture pathways. And as much as that was needed to answer questions, it was in the additional small details that helped lead you to an answer…

Lastly, make sure you do practice problems as you are going through the information. I’m terrible at this, because I feel like if I’m going to do the questions I want to make sure I know the content first! But apparently, this is not a good way to learn (according to my learning specialist at school).

The practice questions that were given were taken from the back of the recommended book and from the Guyton & Hall review book. I still recommend that you know your processes well and what happens when you change one part (or multiple parts) and how the different moving pieces respond. Otherwise, get your hands on practice questions; you’ll need all the practice and help you can get for this section!

As always, let me know what you liked, didn’t like, or what you would like to see next in the comments below! Hopefully I will have more useful information for you guys in the next block.