How is Advance Introduction to Clinical Medicine Like

Advanced Introduction to Clinical Medicine semester is broken down in two separate sections. Before the students had to do clinical rotations plus attend the lecture classes; however, lectures and clerkship gets in the way of each other. If someone is at surgery rotation then he or she cannot attend the lecture classes if the surgery does not finish. To make things easier from now on, students are to attend the lectures for the first 8 weeks; afterward, in the 2nd 8 weeks students complete the assigned clinical clerkship.

So far I’m in the lecture portion and I haven’t experienced clinical yet so I cannot write anything regarding the clinical clerkship.

For the first two weeks it’s a pain because we’re in the hospital till 7 PM. Some days we have to come at 8 AM and other days we have to come at 2 PM but we usually leave after 5 in the evening. And whenever we come home late we’re tired and we need time to relax and by that time it’s already 9 at night so, we don’t have time to study. However, after these two weeks we will back in our normal schedule, 8 AM to 2 PM. Even in that six hours we only get 10 min break in every hour, with no lunch break so, after 2 hours most of us loose attention and wonder off. Some of students are texting or playing games on the phone, others are on the PC, and others are talking in the back.

NBME Exam
Everyone took the NBME exam this week and by no surprise majority of the students performed badly. They performed badly not because they didn’t study, it’s all because the preparation wasn’t as strong as it should be in Bonaire. However, now based on how they can study and perform academically, they will now need to review all the concepts of medicine and establish that strong foundation of medicine so they can do well in the USMLE tests.