Source: https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/
Intro
Hi! My name is Jayden Yap and I’m a Year 2 Medical Student. I was in BCME (Bio, Chem, Math, Econs) back in RI, graduated in 2018 and enrolled in NUS Medicine in 2019. Just like what I’m sure many of you are feeling now, I too was undecided on what to go for; should I take medicine, engineering, law maybe? There were just so many choices!
In the end, I decided to go with medicine. It has been tough, for sure, and probably will be tougher going forward, but I’ve enjoyed it thus far! For those of you thinking of joining medicine, or who are just curious as to what life is like there, I’ve compiled a simple guide based on my experiences thus far.
Hopefully, this will give you guys a better idea of what to expect, and answer some of your burning questions!
(p.s. I’ve split the guide into 4 separate parts, so you guys can quickly dive in to whichever section you would like to know about :D)
Daily Life and Workload - Education Structure
First, I would need to explain how people are grouped in Medicine, because these groups form the basis of who you spend most of your time learning with.
The House System
Overview: This is a system ENTIRELY for social purposes. Essentially, there are 10 houses in NUS Medicine, and each person is assigned (randomly, we think) to a house at the start of school. Since there are 5 years of study in Medicine, each house will have students from each of the 5 years
What you do with the House
Medicamp: This is the orientation camp of the Faculty of Medicine. You spend the entire camp with your housemates from your batch, and the house seniors from the batch above you. Expect standard orientation activities - nothing too special but still a nice opportunity to make new friends!
Counsellor: This is the “buddy” system of medicine. After Medicamp, each Fresh student (Y1 student) is matched with a senior from the batch above (Y2 student) to be their counsellor. While there are no hard and fast rules as to what a counsellor and counsellee have to do, generally what people do is ask their counsellors for study advice/notes and meet up for a meal sometimes.
House Room: This is a lounge room that each house has. Students from all 5 years of study from that house come to the room between lessons/whenever to chill and study. It’s a really good place to meet seniors and hang out with friends.
The Clinical Group (CG) System
Overview: This is a system for EDUCATIONAL purposes. At the start of Y1, you will be grouped with 5 other random students (who may or may not be from your house). Throughout the year, all educational activities will be done with your CG. Each person is assigned a new CG at the start of each year, up till Y3. The CG you are assigned at Y3 will remain with you all the way till Y5.
What do you do with your CG
Education: Apart from lectures, ALL educational activities (which you will see later) are done with the CG
Social: Since you will be spending most of your schooling time with your CG, the CG tends to be your closer few friends in Medicine (especially for Y1). So a lot of the time CGs will go out for lunches and study together. Essentially, they become one of your main cliques in school.
There are 2 phases of education in NUS Medicine, both having very distinct forms of teaching:
Year 1 and 2:
Overview: These are the first 2 years of education in NUS. The main aim is to teach you how the body works (Y1) and all the main problems that can occur in the body (Y2). This is really the time to develop the fundamentals that you build knowledge and skills upon for the rest of your career.
Topics Covered:
Y1: Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Histology, Radiology, Ethics, Medsoc (social studies)
Y2: Pathology, Pharmacology, Microbiology, Immunology, Ethics, Medsoc
Style of Teaching/Types of Lessons:
Lectures: This makes up the main bulk of how content is taught. Basically it’s the exact same thing as lectures in JC, where you have the whole school sat in a lecture theatre for 1-2 hours listening and taking notes while a topic is taught. It is worth noting that these lectures are all uploaded online, which means you can actually pon lectures and webcast them.
Tutorials: This is where you consolidate the information taught from lectures and have an opportunity to ask questions. There will be one tutorial after the end of each topic taught (for example, one tutorial after the whole heart anatomy is taught). The tutorials are always in groups of about 20 and will be facilitated by 1 tutor - think of it like the tutorials you have back in JC.
Collaborative Learning Classes (CLCs): This is a special kind of tutorial, also at the end of each topic. It’s a bigger size tutorial of about 30-40 people. The main point of CLCs is to go through real life cases and how to handle them. The tutors will walk you through step by step, from how to figure out what disease he has, to pre-empting any potential complications of the disease, to knowing how to treat the problem.
Anatomy/Histology Hall: This is a practical session at the end of every anatomy topic (hence it is only in Y1!). For anatomy, you would get to see a real life cadaver and have to learn how to identify crucial anatomical structures on it. For histology, you would get to see real life microscopy slides and learn how to identify which part of the body the cells are from.
Clinical Skills Foundation Programme (CSFP): This is a programme in Y2 that teaches you the basics on how to examine a patient in real life. There would be actual actors posing as patients who you would have to both talk to and physically examine, in order to figure out what disease they have.
Notes
Lecture Slides: This would be one of the biggest changes between JC learning and Uni learning. There are NO NOTES that teachers make from which you can mug from. Instead, there are LECTURE POWERPOINT SLIDES (some are good some are awful) that teachers upload onto a website. What most people do is they download these slides onto Onenote (or any app that allows you to draw/write on), and take notes on these slides during the lecture.
Seniors’ Notes: These are fairly comprehensive notes made by seniors for each topic. They are free and easily accessible in a Onedrive folder that your seniors will pass to you. Some people choose to study these instead of lecture slides as they are more systematic a lot easier to understand. However, do note that examination questions will only be asked from Lecture Slides, and seniors’ notes often have incorrect content/concepts - hence, use at your own discretion!
Year 3 to 5
Overview: To be quite honest, I am not too sure about the exact details of how life is from Year 3-5. However, I am aware of the broad concept of how learning will be. Each year will be split into block of 10 weeks. In each of these blocks, you will shadow doctors of a specific specialty, to learn the basics of actually being a practising physician in that specialty. At the end of each block, there will be a block exam, and it all cumulates to an end-year paper.
Daily Life and Workload - School, Exam and Holiday Schedules
First, I’ll show you how a general week of school looks like for Y1 students:
In general, school starts at 8.30 everyday and ends at around 12-1pm on early days or 4-6pm on late days. Overall, its a lot lighter than JC school timetables.
As for examinations, there are 4 for Y1 and 3 for Y2 (and a whole bunch for Y3-5). Each school year starts on 12 Aug, and here is the regular exam and holiday schedule for the first 2 years:
Year 1
CA1: End September
CA2: Mid November
Mid Year Break: The whole of December
CA3: Early March
Finals: End April
End of Year Break: May, June, July
Year 2
CA1: Mid October
Mid Year Break: The whole of December (sadly you’re kind of forced to study this break, because of the approaching exam)
CA2: Early January
Finals: Early March
CSFP Exam (this is basically a practical exam): Early April
End of Year Break: May, June (Y3 STARTS IN JULY)
This is a three-part series on NUS Medicine. Links to all articles in this series:
Guide to NUS Medicine, Chapter 1: Daily Life and Workload (this article)
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