Year 2

  • Congratulations on passing first year…

    But now the real work begins! Second year at Imperial has a reputation for being one of the harder years in the course so it is important to keep a balance between your social life and work life. This doesn’t mean that you should be hitting the library every spare second of your day, just be sensible. Most of the lectures build on knowledge you (should) already have and become a lot more clinical i.e. a lot more interesting.

    The topics you will cover come under LCRS, MCD and S&P; you will be examined on these just after Easter, and some additional teaching. In addition you get a taster of Year 3 life in a three week placement in December!

    Life Cycle & Regulatory System

    LCRS is going to be the bane of your life until after Easter. It is the biggest course, which should build on topics you should recognise from Year 1, and subsequently is broken into two parts: LCRS 1 and LCRS 2 As there is a lot of new material especially pharmacology, we do suggest that you play more attention in them than you did in fresher’s year.

    Molecules, Cells and Disease

    MCD is a definite step up from first year; most of the content will be completely unfamiliar. In Autumn term you are taught Haematology with an afternoon of Diagnostics. The rest of MCD is taught in Spring term with the most infamous topic of Cancer making up the bulk of the year, you will also cover some Microbiology and Immunology. These may seem quite scary but you will be fine as long as you try to keep on top of it!

    Science and the Patient

    S&P has built up a reputation of not being as serious as a topic as say LCRS but just you wait until the day before handing in your project or the exam, you won’t be thinking that! There are some lectures in autumn term that focus on reading and writing research papers, these come in very useful when it comes to writing your Project in the summer. Where as the Summer Lectures focus on the management of patients in various clinical settings and you will be expected to write an essay on these during the exam but don’t panic you will get plenty of help!

    Dr and Patient, Fountain of Clinical Practice & 3 Week Firm

    You will be taught by FY2s in tutorials regarding Professional and Personal Development (PPD). You will continue to have PBL sessions where you build on the skills you learnt in Year 1. Clinical Communications sessions will develop your skills further with sessions on note taking and case presentation that consultants will expect you to know how to do in future firms. Ethics is taught by Dr Wing May Kong throughout the year and will be examined, along with PPD and Communications in 3rd year.

    The 3 week placement is a taster of what 3rd year will be like, you are allocated a hospital and a firm. Make the most of it by exploring the hospitals.

    Exams

    Summative exams for LCRS 1, LCRS 2 and MCD are at the beginning of summer term in May and will consist of the same format of SBAs, EMQs and SAQs. The Science and Patient has an exam at the end of summer term in June. It consists of SAQs and an extended essay question where you will be expected to integrate all the knowledge you have learnt in the module. There is also an in-course project write up which will count towards your final mark as well. The intranet has an exams page with detailed breakdowns and dates of each paper.

  • Representation

    Responses from the Last Student Staff Liaison Group: 23/11/2011

    • We need FEEDBACK on whether you think Diagnostics would be better taught on an entire day than just an afternoon: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YL62T6G
    • Remember to continue using SOLE - it really does change stuff
    • Please use the Blackboard Discussion Boards (http://blackboard.ic.ac.uk) to discuss topics you do not understand. Discussing topics such as neuro with others will help, lecturers will also be moderating and giving their input.
    • Anatomy of the HNS specimens will be sorted out over Christmas, and hopefully some new prosections will be made, if you are interested in doing any of the prosections please email: r.waddington@imperial.ac.uk
    • Please feedback on your anatomy demonstrators especially those with dubious knowledge immediately after the sessions to the course leader – this is the most effective way of changing stuff
    • PBL Peer Feedback is compulsory for your professional development, and will be given back after Christmas – it will be anonymised as much as possible.
    • Most importantly we will have access to a COMPLETE electronic timetable, after christmas with smartphone integration as well!
    • Students are reminded to have their College ID on them at all times whilst on college premises.
    • Tutors have commented that students should use their college emails to email them as it’s more professional.

    Year Reps

    Year 2 Reps
    Email: su-year2-reps-dl@imperial.ac.uk
    Anju George, Claire Brash, Umar Riyaz, Nicky Raeside

    Why become a year rep?

    In second year, you will again have the opportunity to run for one of the four positions of being your year’s educational representation. Having seen your year reps at work and if you think you can do what they did then apply. Your year reps made a big difference last year in maintaining the strong feedback and pushing for changes in the Faculty.

    So if you like being in the know and are passionate, enthusiastic and wouldn’t mind being the voice of your year, then we want you!

    Years reps attend termly student-focussed meetings called Staff-Student Liaison Groups (SSLG) where students can voice their opinions to the course leaders themselves. The Faculty of Medicine and ICSMSU pride ourselves on the strong relationship we have with each other and how changes actual occur from student feedback and suggestions. In the past, year reps have had huge impacts on making exams more bearable by spreading out them out at the end of year 1 and 2. They have also started from a student suggestion to provide us with valuable exam feedback, which we never got before. They also were successful in pushing forward a motion of changing how distinctions and merits are given.

    Don’t be put off by what others say, it’s a worthwhile position that allows you to give back to your year and union.

  • “During second year I felt more of a student at university. It was vital to keep a good balance of social life, work and extracurricular activities - there are so many clubs and societies to get involved with and there is something for everyone.

    The workload was bigger in second year, thus it was important to keep on top of lectures during the whole year, however, you still have time to go to events and get involved in a club or society. I enjoyed second year as I knew how everything worked a lot more than I did in first year and was a lot more confident about the new style of learning. I became a lot more a part of the medical school other than a fresher, as I got to know a lot of older years better.

    I came to realise that the medical school is like a big family and there is always someone there to look after and help you, whether it’s Muslim Medics, an older person in your sports team, someone that you met in the library or even your assigned parent.” – A 3rd Year

    “Second Year went by like a breeze. You don’t realise how quickly a year passes. I remember last year’s snow ball (the parts I remember) and I remember being in Pharmacology like it was yesterday and I ACTUALLY remember the stuff I was taught in the lectures. The work does pile up but the good thing is you know it does: everyone tells you that second year is the hardest year. Strangely I didn’t think it wasn’t hard, it was just a LOT of stuff.

    I was told that the year above had 4 weeks for Easter and we had 6. I genuinely wished we had only 4 as I thought I was going to go crazy in my 5th week of revision. However my revision style changed from proplus fuelled all-nighters in the SK library to a regular 10am to 8pm revision sessions every day and it paid off. I felt so much more in control of my revision and I’m so happy I didn’t burn out like a lot of my friends. You’ve got to be able to judge how you’re doing, don’t be misguided by how fast/slow others work.“ - A 3rd Year

  • DISCLAIMER: All the material found on this page are student-made, so may contain errors, mistakes or in some cases be incomplete. They are also only for personal use. If there is a discrepancy with the material, please follow what the lecturers’ material

    Question Bank

    Student-written practice questions for Year 2 can be downloaded HERE

    Student Led Tutorials

    Click to download Ken Wu’s Vestibular and Eye Tutorial 20/11/12
    Click to download Ken Wu’s Cancer Cell Cycle Tutorial 26/03/12
    Click to download Ken Wu’s Vestibulocochlear Tutorial 23/11/2011 -
    Gretsey’s Videos are next to his first lecture slides, avilable on the intranet here
    Link to all the Muslim Medic tutorial slides

    Student Notes

    Please look at the Notebank available here: http://www.icsmsu.com/exec/education/notebank/

  • First Firms

    ICSM Year 2 Revision & Firms on Prezi

 
There is also additional topics taught Ethics which will be taught thorough-out the year but is not tested until Year 3! PPD is introduced this year with CC being carried on from Year 1. You also still have PBL to help integrate the lecture material that you are taught together and hopefully you will have perfected your PBL techniques by now...
LCRS 1 consisting of ★ Pharmacology ★ Endocrinology ★ Human Life Cycle
LCRS 2 covers the 5 topics of: ★ Neuroscience & Mental Health ★ Psychology ★ Musculoskeletal ★ Anatomy and the Head, Neck and Spine ★ Anatomy of the Limbs.
MCD in the autumn term is pretty light but don't be deceived you need to still learn it! Especially Diagnostics which many people take for granted. However both of these are very useful to know about before going on firms so you can pretend you know all about lab tests.
Cancer is the most notorious topic of Year 2 MCD. It is the bulk of the course and sadly, these lectures are not the most interesting; that is if you're not becoming an oncologist. Either way you just got to trod your way through them.
These two topics are pretty small in comparison to Cancer and Haematology, however they do cover some important material such as hospital infections, allergies, and transplantation.
This is when your whole year will be involved in a real experiment that you plan out with the help of Prof Meeran. Of course it won't be an original piece of research but it does gives you an insight into how real papers are written and it also gives you key skills that will come in handy in the BSc year (many older years comment that they didn't really appreciate its importance until after 4th year).
The main topics covered here are: Water & Electrolytes, Physiology of Infection, Nutrition, Exercise and Drugs.
Professional and Personal Development (PPD) is a course that will continue throughout your next 5 years that focusses on developing you as a doctor and putting you into that mentality. You get to do the Belbin test that lets you see what role you play in a team as well as tackling challenging cases of misconduct and recovering from making mistakes. It's really interesting to be taught by a newly qualified FY2s!
You get videoed interviewing a stimulated patient in front of two colleagues, so that you can give immediate feedback to each other. Students really appreciate having this session and see it as a natural progression from year 1 just before going onto Year 2 Firms and interviewing real patients.
 There are also scheduled tutorials that will ask you to tackle common ethical issues that will arise in your future career and how to deal with them. The material will be examined in Year 3 with Law, so it gives you a year to encounter various ethical dilemmas and witness how doctors deal with them in your firms.
Of course this differs from hospital to hospital but this is your one chance to see the whole of hospital whether it be staying on-call with the F1s or taking a trip to A&E for an afternoon.