The enemy within....?

Today was an interesting day...Wednesday afternoon is lecture afternoon (or Plenaries as we are supposed to call them).

At the first one, the lecturer (who is also the Year 4/5 Director) decided to have a few pops at biochemistry and the former head of year 2 who was our arch Biochemist. He also through in a few anti-American gags and criticised their methodology in clinical trials where they compare new treatments to placebo instead of to the current best treatment. I could see his point but eel it may have been lost on some people.

The second lecture was from an old-school Clinical Biochemist. The Uni had forgotten to load his emailed powerpoint, so he did the first half from his photocopied handout and just used the powerpoint for the second half after a member of staff brought it over from the MedSchool.

We then had mock exam feedback from this lecturer and one of the Haematologists. The Biochemistry guy was very strong on knowing the basics now, and ignoring lots of the treatment details until clinical years and postgrad training. One of the Uni Medical Education staff who was chairing this session had a look on her face of 'pained amusement' at this point.

The Haematology guy then slagged off the blood cell morphology images we were asked to identify cells from, and also criticised teh choices and pointed out that no one apart from haematology staff looks at blood films regularly and thus he questioned the point of the exam question and suggested it was useless.

He and the Medical education staff member emphasised that we need to focus on the EMQ question and try to work out the answers before looking at the answers, and never to leave any blanks.